Busy Mum's Guide to Mopping: Rubbermaid Reveal Review and Giveaway

I'm not a big fan of mopping.

Especially with a toddler in the house.

Sophie, on the other hand, loves it. What's not to love? She gets to follow Mum around, pops her hands in the bucket of soapy water, and slip-slides around behind me as I go.

Very cute, I'll admit. But it makes a relatively quick and easy chore a lot more complicated and time consuming than it should be.

So I was VERY pleased to receive this mop - the Rubbermaid Reveal Mop - a couple of weeks ago.

This mop has a removable spray bottle attached - I can fill it with any cleaning solution I have in the cupboard, and then I just spray and go.

No bucket of water. I literally just pull the trigger at the top of the mop, it sprays the cleaner on the floor, and I mop right over it. Done.

Oh man I love this mop.

I think you'll love it too. It's RRP is $39.95 and is available at selected Bunnings stores around Australia. You can also go here for more info. There other benefits you'll like (e.g you can wash the mop head, so you don't have to spend more $$ to replace it).

My only problem now is I don't really have an excuse to not clean the floor anymore.. hope the Husband isn't reading this post ;)

$39.95 is a good price for the satisfaction you get from using it. But I also have 1 to giveaway if you're interested :)

Here's what you need to do:

• Comment here and tell me if the Rubbermaid Reveal Spray Mop would make you more inclined to mop your floors
• Make sure you leave me some way to get in touch with you (email, FB, Blog link, Twitter details, etc). You can email your info privately to me at marissaroberts@live.com.au if you like. If I have no way of getting in touch with you, your entry won't count, so don't forget!

I'll pick a winner from the comments section using random.org and will announce it here in the comments on Tuesday February 15, 2011 so you need to enter by midnight (Sydney time) on Monday Feb 14, 2011. I'll also contact the winner directly using the contact method from their entry. Please note the prize can only be shipped within Australia.

Send me an email if you have any questions!

** I received a complimentary Reveal Mop courtesy of Rubbermaid Australia via Aussie Mummy Bloggers. All opinions expressed are purely my own.

what happens when Mum is away...

So I took the day off yesterday to go to a Nutrimetics event in Sydney. I had a great time, and of course missed Ben and Sophie heaps.

Ben and Sophie's grandparents took Soph to swimming and then spent the rest of the day together. She had a ball.

I was, however, very surprised when I saw this:



My girly girl washing Dad's motorbike! I go away for ONE day, and it's motorbike fever at the Roberts house!

Oh who am I kidding? She's so cute :)

But just to clarify Ben, she's too young to ride it. Yes, even if she has a little helmet...

Big thanks to Thea from Do I really Wanna Blog? for helping me add this video :)

aden +anais giveaway winner!

And the winner of my aden + anais giveaway is...

Veronica!!

Congratulations Veronica!

Please email me your contact details and choice of swaddles (boy/girl/gender neutral) so I can organise for your prize to be sent to you :)

I'd also like to say a HUGE thank you to everyone who participated in this giveaway. Thank you for taking the time to read the post and leave a comment, it's much appreciated.

And Kym, Best of luck with the new baby, hope you are ok there up in QLD (thinking of all of you at this difficult time). Let me know which name you go with!

Busy Mum's Guide: How to wash dishes

Image provided here

I am NOT one of the lucky ones that have a dishwasher.

For me, washing the dishes is not fun. I mean, yes, there's water. Yes, there's bubbles. Yes, there's cute rubber gloves. But there are also dirty dishes :(

Here's how I make the most of my dishwashing time. I aim for quick and easy:

1. Take a walk around the house and grab every dish from every room. There's nothing worse than finishing the washing up and finding 1 left over at the end.
   
   
2. Sort the dishes into categories, from cleanest to dirtiest. You can sort them physically on your counter or just come up with the order in your head. Mine goes: baby stuff, glasses/cups, cutlery, plates pots and pans. Yours may be different. That's ok.
   
   
3. Make sure your dish drainers are completely empty. I have 2. I am not a dryer, I am a stacker. If your drainer(s) are not part of the sink, pop a clean tea towel underneath them to stop any water dripping / flooding onto your counter.
   
   
4. Start washing, in order - cleanest to dirtiest.
   
   
5. Stack carefully as you go, so that a) nothing falls, and b) everything can drip dry (e.g. bowls upside down or on an angle).
   
   
6. Rinse as you go - if you need to. I do a lot of rinsing of baby stuff and glasses, but that's it. I'd rather save the water. And my energy.
   
   

And that's it! Now go and do something a lot more fun.

How do you do your dishes?

Review and Giveaway: aden & anais baby swaddles

I'd like to say a big thanks to the lovelies at Junger-Godfrey PR for sending me these aden & anais swaddles to review.

I'm currently pregnant with my second baby and have been looking for some new wraps. The ones I had for Sophie when she was a baby were beautiful, but they were quite small and I could only use them for a few months before she would work her way out of them.

These ones are so much bigger and the patterns are just gorgeous. I chose the alpha bit swaddles which are really nice unisex ones using bright colours - orange, green, blue, red etc.

Now the new baby isn't due till June, so Sophie and I practiced wrapping them on her teddy. It turned out well, here is a pic:

I originally tried wrapping Sophie, but as you can see, she's very grown up now, so that didn't really work out!

They have instructions on the back on how to swaddle your baby, which came in handy for me because I had never used any this big before, plus after a year, I couldn't even remember how I used to wrap Sophie. Funny how quickly you forget how to do the baby stuff!

And their website is really good, you can browse and buy online, plus it has a learning section on how and why to swaddle. I love the page with pics of celebrities using them with their babies. I'm a big Jessica Alba and Nicole Richie fan so that was cool :)

All in all, I'm really happy with these swaddles. They work well, are easy to care for, and the colours and prints are the nicest I have seen so far. I'll be using them as wraps, pram covers, floor covers, and probably tons of other things. I'll be sneaking back onto the website to look at the washcloth sets as well :)

Here's a link to their website if you would like to take a look.

I also have a giveaway up for grabs! All you have to do is:

• Like 'aden + anais' on Facebook


• Follow @adenandanais on Twitter


• Comment here and say whether you have liked / followed / both

You can find their FB and Twitter links at the bottom left corner of their website.

The winner can choose between boy, girl or gender neutral swaddles so make sure you have a look at the selection!

I'll pick a winner from the comments section using random.org and will announce it here in the comments on Tuesday January 11, 2011 so you need to enter by midnight (Sydney time) on Monday Jan 10, 2011. Please note the prize can only be shipped within Australia. Make sure you leave me some way to get in touch with you! Send me an email if you have any questions :)

WW: Sophie and the grass hill