WINNER!

We have a winner!  Thanks to everyone who entered our Lion King give away.  It seems like a lot of us have similar wonderful taste in movies :-)

But there could only be one winner and Kym at Mumma's Mini Mes is the winner with her comment...

"Finding Nemo, I have lost count of how many times she has watched it, she is obsessed with animals and loves watching fish swim."

It sounds like we might have seen that movie a similar number of times.

Thank you again to everyone who entered and a very big thank you to Mandy at Porter Novelli for being so fantastic and looking after my Lion King obsessed son with this fantastic opportunity.

Thank you also to our family and friends who keep checking up on us and chastising us for not posting more regularly... I promise I will try harder.  I can't promise that posts will eventuate from my trying but I will try.

Lion King Giveaway

A loooong time ago in a lounge room far away, a package arrived.  That package was long anticipated... Mummy got VERY excited, very very excited.  Her boys could completely understand why... TNT!  Mummy had a box full of dynamite!... hang on, what?  No I didn't.

Rewind.

Way way back my Lion King obsessed Lion started asking questions... "Mum, when will I get my own Lion King DVD?"... "Mum, you said that I could have a Lion King DVD sometime when it got near my birthday, is that soon?"  So... since I have contacts, I emailed my insider at Porter Novelli who do the PR for Disney DVD.  "Soon," she said, "very soon."

I emailed her back to let her know that my kids back-flipped and somersaulted and did hand stands and danced a jig ON MY COUCH... FOR 10 MINUTES!!!  She thought that perhaps they might be interested in checking it out and having a little party to go with it.  Well, in the interest of making my furniture last a little longer I said they'd love that and decided not to tell the kids about it.  So, sitting and waiting and waiting and waiting and then the package arrived!  Y'know the one that I was writing about at the start?  Yeah, that one.    After I calmed them down and told them that TNT was the courier company and there is no way on earth that I would get a delivery of TNT and even if I did, they cannot use it to blow up the gully, try to start a landslide... or anything else for that matter.  I know, I might just be the meanest mum on earth!  Anyway, then I told them that it was FULL of Lion King stuff... including the DVD!

Well... we needed to organise a little party!  We had the Disney Singstar PS2 game to rock out to and no one to rock with.  After a few failed attempts, vomiting bugs, party guests leaving town, we FINALLY managed to pull together a little group of buddies to play the game and watch the movie... and have a heap of fun.

Dragon sings his little heart out!

The movie is just as you remember it... only better!  Really, I get sceptical about these movies being re-released that are supposed to be clearer and smoother and whatever... but it really is.  Having watched The Lion King over and over and over wherever we could track down a copy I had it well stored in my mind to be able to do a comparison.  The voices are sharper, the field of grass flicking in the breeze is clean and crisp, it's fantastic!

Cousin Wilbie is serious when it comes to Karaoke.

We had little competitions to win cute little baby Simba plush toys, we ate worms in dirt (lamingtons with gummy worms shoved in them), ostrich nuggets (that looked suspiciously like chicken nuggets), cheese, crackers, all sorts of yummy stuff.

It did occasionally get a little tricky to see what you were supposed to be singing while you were wearing a Simba mask!

Again, this Karaoke is serious business!

Musical statues and a dance-off... sounds like a good party to me!

We were very happy to have some special visitors with us, you haven't met them on this blog before.  They are this crew.  Dene, Rachel, used to be my youth group leaders a looong time ago and Dene was in our wedding party (and Rachel was indispensable to us that day as well, she took care of so many things we had forgotten to organise).  Together with their kids Eliott and Simeon, they are preparing to head off to Japan as missionaries.  They had a short stay in Townsville where we managed to fit in plenty of time to catch up and hang out and have Lion King themed parties.

Sooooo, here's the really exciting part...

The crew at Porter Novelli have let me have a fantastic Lion King prize pack to give away!  Soooo, if you would like to win this fantastic prize pack below then please leave a comment on this post telling me in 25 words or less, what your favourite kids move of all time is and why.  Mine is Mary Poppins... no, actually it's Anastasia... or um... well... I hope you can be more decisive than me!  So, go on, let me know!

I was not paid for this but I did receive a Disney DVD, The Lion King pack from Porter Novelli and Disney DVD along with a gift card to supply our party.  All opinions expressed are entirely my own... and my kids.

Competition runs until 7pm AEST, Friday Dec 23rd 2011 and is open to Australian residents only.  Please make sure you comment with a valid email address (if you are a noreply@blogger.com address please include an email in your comment), if I cannot get hold of you I will have to pick someone else.

My blogger account has not been notifying me by email of comments to my posts but I promise I will check regularly to make sure all comments are included!

Random thoughts and a random winner...

My brain is a little random today.  So I am just going to dump it all out on here and hope that helps.  It also fits with the other need for this post... picking a random winner for the Walt Disney Studios Alice in Wonderland 60th Anniversary Special Edition giveaway... but I'm going to make you wait for that.

Monkey has FINALLY cut the missing tooth from his crooked little smile.  He has had 3 bottom teeth at the front for the last 6 months.  The fourth one just wouldn't come through.  FINALLY it has shown itself and is a sharp little fang, I think it may even be responsible for his cranky moods and upset nights of late.  Even if it's not, I'm going to blame it anyway because the other option is just that my child is a little feral.

I turned 30 last week.  I don't feel old but apparently I'm pretty much geriatric now.

I'm still getting pimples.  This is beyond a joke.  They were supposed to stop after puberty.  I guess officially this is still after puberty but I was kind of expecting something a little closer to the end of puberty, not still be going at 30.  I hate pimples.

I cleaned my lounge room at least 5 times over the weekend.  Is it any wonder I can't get the house clean if I have to keep re-cleaning the same rooms over and over and over?

Last night at 10pm I was scrubbing out the cupboards under the sink... I like to live on the wild side.  I spilt half a litre of milk under the dishwasher last week and I cleaned up the milk straight away but with the dishwasher pulled out I figured I'd better clean up all the other gunk that was collected under there.  So finally last night I got around to that and when we went to put the dishwasher back we realised that when Wolf pulled it out the spot where the drain hose connects to the drain under the sink had cracked and grotty drain water had been dripping under the sink all weekend... Thus, at 10pm I had just finished cleaning under the dishwasher when we conducted emergency repairs to the connection (the dishwasher was running before we realised so it was a race against the cycle) and then commenced pulling the cupboards apart and cleaning it all out.  Admit it, you are jealous of my exciting life.

I have made white sauce approximately 9349428490 times.  I know that you NEVER walk away from it, not even for 'just a second'.  It will, without fail, be that exact second that it starts to thicken and grab at the pot and because you aren't there to stir it you'll get a million lumps that you can't get rid of.  I KNOW THIS... yet I do it every time.  I walk away... I get lumps.  Oh well, no one complains... they know better than that.

There's still more random in my brain but this will do for now, I can't keep you waiting forever.

Now, the moment you've all been waiting for...  The winner of the Walt Disney Studios Alice in Wonderland 60th Anniversary Special Edition is comment number...

The third eligible comment belonged to...

Kym from mumma's Mini Mes

Congratulations Kym, if you can email me at MummyMcTavish@gmail.com and let me know your mailing address I will pass the details on so you can be sent your copy of Alice in Wonderland.  

For the rest of you, I'm sorry but you'll have to go out and buy your own copy... or hunt down one of the other competitions running to win it ☺

It really is a wonderful family movie and we will be enjoying it over and over and over again!

A Very Happy Un-Birthday To ME!

Sadly I only get 6 un-birthdays this week but I do get 1 birthday to make up for it.  It's a big week for birthdays around here.  REALLY big.  My father-in-law's was on Sunday.  My sister-in-law's (Mum-me) is on this Sunday and mine is on Thursday.  You'd think that was enough excitement.  Then you go a little further out and you find out that my cousin was born on my 3rd birthday so his is also on Thursday and we were both born the day after our Grandad's birthday, so although he's not alive anymore we will still remember his birthday on Wednesday.  See what I mean it's a big week.  But we aren't the only ones celebrating this week.  Walt Disney Studios is having a little bit of a celebration too... they are releasing the 60th Anniversary Edition of Alice in Wonderland!!!

I LOVE this movie.  I loved it as a kid, I have loved it as an adult and I loved this new, remastered and fancified version too!  But before I start raving on about Alice let me tell you something...

When I was a kid we didn't have our own VCR.

I'll let that sink in for a minute...

What? What's a VCR?  Um, well, it was a big box thing that you plugged into your TV and you shoved these other boxes inside it that were kind of like a big cassette tape and... what's a cassette tape?  oh, uh, never mind.

Anyway, we had no way to see anything that wasn't on the 2 or 3 channels of free to air TV.  Now don't even get me started on the time when we only had a tiny black and white TV and the sound was shot so we had to watch ABC so we could tune in the radio to be able to hear it... talk about deprived childhoods!

So, on the holidays dad would borrow a VCR (remember, that's a movie player thingamabob) from whichever school he was teaching at at the time and we'd be able to go to the video shop and hire some movies.  We also got to watch movies at our Grandparents on the weekends.

Now, I'm not sure if it was at my grandparents or if we just always got the same movies from the video shop but we ALWAYS seemed to end up watching Disney's Alice in Wonderland.  LOVE IT.  But the thing about Videos was that once the tape got a little stretched everything on that section of tape got a little stretched too... so you can just imagine what the sound was like.  Hooooboy, I can not believe how beautiful this new 60th anniversary edition sounds!  I heard every word... when I could get the kids to stop talking over it "Shhhhh, mummy's reliving her deprived childhood".  Also, I'm not usually a fan of all the talkey talkey "bonus" stuff they put on DVDs but I was HOOKED.  I loved hearing about what Walt Disney went through to produce this movie, I especially loved hearing from the lady that was the voice of Alice... LOVED IT ALL!

They are releasing it as a DVD & Blu-Ray value pack!  We don't have a Blu-Ray player so I couldn't watch all the bonus stuff that was exclusive to the Blu-Ray version but if you do then you get to see even more exciting stuff.  If you want a taste of what it's like you can check out the official trailer...

But ya wanna know something?  It's not available yet.  Not until Wednesday June 8th.  So, how have I seen it?  Well, the lovely folk at Porter Novelli sent me a copy on behalf of Walt Disney Studios.  Sweet, aren't they?  But the even more exciting thing is that they want to send one of you a copy too!  How sweet is that?

So if you want to WIN your VERY OWN copy of Walt Disney Studios Alice in Wonderland 60th Anniversary Special Edition then you'd better enter my little competition.

It's easy to do, all you need to do is tell me in the comments who your favourite character is from Alice in Wonderland.  If you haven't seen it just tell me your favourite Disney character from any movie.

Mine is Alice, no, no, uh, actually it's the March Hare... or, uh, maybe it's the crazy White Rabbit... but sometimes I can really associate with the Queen of Hearts...

Well, I don't really know who mine is, but I'd love to know who your favourite is so get commenting.

*Official stuff that I need you to read starts here*

• One entry per person.
• Australian residents only.
• This requires no skill, the winner will be randomly selected from all valid entries.
• Please make sure I can find your email address easily either in your comment, on your blog, in your profile... just put it somewhere, please!
• Competition ends Midday Sunday June 12th.

  

Disclosure: I received a complimentary review copy of the DVD courtesy of Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment via Digital Parents. No financial payment was offered nor accepted for this post. All opinions expressed are purely my own.

WINNER!!!!

So... I tallied up all the entries for our competition to win the Muppet Christmas Carol DVD... I went and googled "random number generator" because I decided to use something other than the one that everyone else seems to use because I'm all for the 'little guy'... I found one that made me laugh with this...

 Yep, thanks for that Math Goodies.  If that's your selling point... well, you might want to re-think.

Anyway, I do like my privacy so I put in my numbers and hit the magic button so it would do it's thing and this is what it said...

That's a 3 there.  So then I checked out who had comment #3 and it was....

drum roll please...........

and a cute picture to slow you down...

Awwww, so cute, he wants to keep it...

mumtoj

Jo, if you can email me at MummyMcTavish[at]gmail[dot]com with your postal details I'll get this awesome movie off to you so you can watch it 57zillion times before Christmas.  It's based on a classic, that makes it educational... right?

Sorry to everyone who didn't win.  It makes me very sad that I can't give each and every one of you this fantastic movie but unfortunately I'm not that nice.

But tonight... our closing comments tonight come from those original grumpy old men...

Statler and Waldorf.

Reviewing Handy Manny - A Very Handy Holiday... and a GIVE AWAY

Have you met my mate Manny?  He's a handy kinda bloke to have around and my kids think he's great!  To add to his awesomeness... He released a Christmas DVD this week!  "Handy Manny - A Very Handy Holiday" arrived in our mailbox not long ago for three small boys to review.  They took their job VERY seriously and watched it over and over and over and over and... well, you get the picture.  So, they watched it and offered me their deepest thoughts on it's Christmassy goodness...

We'll start with Dragon.  At four years old and male, he is pretty much the target audience of Handy Manny, I expected big things from his review.

Mummy McT: Dragon, did you like the Handy Manny DVD you just watched?

Dragon: yep.

MMcT: Do you want to tell me something you liked about it?

D: I liked watching it.

MMcT: Is there one part you liked more than the other bits? Maybe how they helped one person or how they fixed something?

D: I just liked watching it, Mum. Just all of it was good. *said with 4 year old attitude*

MMcT: So all-round good viewing?
D: Do you have some chocolate?

Okay, so Dragon's review is just a general thumbs up.  Perhaps Lion with his six year old ways would give me some more to work with here...

Mummy McT: Lion, did you like the Handy Manny DVD you just watched?

Lion: Yeah, I did.

MMcT: Can you tell me one thing that you really liked about it?

L: It snows for Handy Manny's Christmas.  It doesn't snow here, it melts before it hits the ground so it's just rain.

MMcT: What about something Manny and the tools did in the DVD?

L: Yeah they did lots of stuff.

Well, that was going nowhere.  One more kid to try...  He didn't watch it all, it's a bit beyond his 14 month old attention span of 5 seconds but he may have gleaned something from it since he was in the room the whole time...

Mummy McT: Monkey, did you like Handy Manny? *holds up the DVD*

Monkey: ooooOOOOoooooohhhh *tries to grab the DVD*

MMcT: No, sweetie, that's for mummy to hold, you can look at the picture...

M: ooOooooOOOooooh.... oooh. *tricks me with a pointing finger and at the last second, grabs for the DVD*

MMcT: Hey, that's just for looking at... I need a review... Someone tell me SOMETHING... ANYONE???

Ugh.  Only one thing to do...

Mummy McT: So, Mummy, did you like the Handy Manny - A Very Handy Holiday DVD?

Mummy McT: Yeah, I did.  It kept the kids interested for the entire length and they learnt a bit about other cultures celebrating Christmas and it really pushed the message of serving others at Christmas.  I like that, the serving others thing... that is common to all Christmas celebrations, no matter what cultural background you're from.

MMcT: What was your favourite part of the DVD?

MMcT: My favourite? That would have to be the genius that is Disney FastPlay... You chuck the DVD in and it starts the feature... no skipping through trailers and worse, the trailers that they wont let you skip through... FastPlay just plays straight away.  I can get on with stuff.

MMcT: So you didn't watch it 50zillion times with your kids?

MMcT: Are you kidding? I watched it once so I could make sure I knew what was going on and then I got on with stuff I had to do.  After all, what I love most about Manny is what he can do for me.  He can keep my kids entertained long enough for me to get some twitter... facebook... blogging... cleaning time.  Isn't that why you love Manny?

So there you have it.  Handy Manny - A Very Handy Holiday was released this week on Disney DVD and it's good.

__________

Now for the giveaway...

The fantastic folk at Porter Novelli and Disney DVD, as well as giving us a copy of Handy Manny's Christmas DVD to review, have given us a copy of quite possibly my favourite Christmas movie EVER to give away.  This is on my "must watch every year" list.

The Muppet Christmas Carol

Join Kermit the Frog, Miss Piggy and all the hilarious Muppets as they relive Charles Dickens' classic tale, A Christmas Carol. 

If you would like to win this fantastic DVD for your family this Christmas then all you need to do is leave me a comment on this post.  If you are on twitter you can get a bonus entry if you tweet about it with a link to this post and leave another comment here with a link to your tweet.

Entries close 7pm (AEST) Friday 12 November.  Entry is open to Australian residents only. Then again, I guess also anyone who wants to gift it to an Australian resident could enter, because lets face it that would be a nice easy Christmas present taken care of.  But the point is, I can only post it within Australia.

It's a giveaway

Not here!

Go here for a rug giveaway

and

Go here for a lighting giveaway.

And stay and look around their blogs!!!

Two wonderful women with super families.

Random Dragon-ness

Haven't been near the computer much lately. I'm trying to catch up on a blog a day and if you would all mind stopping your blogging for a few days so that I can catch up completely that would be very much appreciated :)

I seem to be moving from one wog to another, at the moment I can hear every breath rattle through my chest and I had to leave bible study early this morning just in case my coughing brought a lung up onto the table... I'm pretty sure they would have coped if I had hacked up a body part, we had been talking a little bit in depth earlier about children with worms and how you know they have them and such. I just figured it would be more comfortable for me if I was at home to do that.

So... to tide you over until I am back to blogging about my beautiful boys here is some randomness from Dragon.

"thankyou for visiting my big blue house mummy" I must have heard this one about 100 times today. I think he may have seen Bear in the Big Blue House one too many times. I wasn't sure what the correct response was so I just said "you're welcome" it seemed to work.

"kskyckfheuyosthjknfueiosh"
"pardon Dragon"
"okkwuehnndy sod sdkohygiy sldjfh"
"pardon Dragon"
"ouata crgadogle"
"one more time for me darling"
slows it right down for his dense old mummy "YOU... ATE... A... CROCODILE"
"oh, no wonder I didn't understand it"

Jennifer from Miles Family Adventures was the first to comment on our exciting news so she'll be getting something special (we're pregnant - just in case you missed it) and I'll blog to answer some questions people asked soon.

Wanna Win Something?

Be the first to comment on this post about the "something new" on the blog and you'll get a little prize...

Don't know what yet. Good chance there'll be chocolate involved.

Just have a look around.