Sigg With Cuipo: One Metre At A Time (Review)

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Since I first started reviewing SIGG eco water bottles (nearly two years ago) I have purchased no more than five plastic water bottles. That's an absolute maximum, and a generous top limit at that.

The first thing we do when we get ready to go out is fill up our water bottles and put them in whichever bag is accompanying us. And, by the time we've brought them home again, they're empty. We're drinking more, saving money, and reducing the amount of rubbish in landfill sites. My first post about our SIGG bottles provided the statistic of having prevented me from buying approximately fifteen bottles in that first month.

15 bottles a month x 23 months since I had my first SIGG bottle = 345 less bottles in landfill.

(It has its downfalls; there are loads of craft activities I've seen on Pinterest that I can't do because I have no plastic bottles!)

The latest collection of SIGG bottles that found their way to us, were produced under collaboration with Cuipo.org. The Cuipo Rainforest Preserve is in Panama. A rainforest which was once protected from the outside world by harsh geography is under threat of deforestation due to improved transportation. Agriculture, logging, development, mining, and tourism have all played a part in its destruction. Cuipo.org have managed to secure 3,300 acres of this rainforest and through the campaign 'One Metre at a Time' are working to safeguard and preserve square metres of the rainforest, one metre at a time. There is a range of products available to purchase which allow the customer to redeem a voucher and therefore 'Save a metre'. And the campaign is also helping to teach indigenous people the skills required to protect their land by becoming park rangers.

And this is where SIGG come in. Each SIGG bottle sold saves one square metre of the rainforest. The first set of Cuipo bottles from SIGG are available in 0.6 and 0.3 litre sizes. Customers purchasing a SIGG Cuipo receive a unique activation code and by entering the code on the Cuipo website, the customers can view their square metre of rainforest via Google Maps.

We were sent the 'Steve the Sloth' (for me, how apt!), 'Bring Your Own Bananas' (Mr. TBaM) and 'Tiko' (for The Boy) bottles to try out and redeem our three metres. And they were just the thing to quench our thirst on a warm Spring day full of frisbee throwing and tree climbing. We may not have tropical rainforests over in Wales, but The Boy certainly treasures any forest he can get to grips with!

recyclable water bottles

The special edition SIGG Cuipo bottles are available from both SIGG online and the Cuipo website directly, from £16.49.

I was sent these products for the purpose of this review post, my opinions are honest and unbiased.

How To Make A Snow Picture

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The Boy loves doing large scale art and when the snow fell earlier in the week, it was the perfect opportunity to get creative again. His recent painting sessions have shown that he is really keen to express himself artistically and so I wanted to allow him the freedom to make whatever picture he saw fit. I gave him the resources and let him get on with it.

We used:

  • A2 mounting card (equally could have used a cardboard box cut up)
  • various coloured paint
  • a variety of sponges and paintbrushes of different sizes and textures
  • silver, blue and white glitter
  • cotton wool
  • metallic white, foil confetti
  • glue
  • bubble wrap
  • coloured pompoms
  • talcum powder

You could also use:

  • tissue paper
  • clear cellophane

How To Make A Snow Picture 1

It's at this point that we talked about how he could use the different materials, it was the bubble wrap that really captured his attention. We popped a load of bubbles talked about what it felt like, looked like and how when it was stretched out it looked like a load of balls. At this point it was laid over the card and The Boy commented on how it looked like snow balls. He decided to paint a garden scene (is this one of the first pictures that they like to paint at this age? It's his most common scene for paintings!) and he set to painting with the grass and the sky.

The thing that often amuses me about infant painting is the way that the sky never reaches the ground, to them it's way above their heads and as they can't see the blue around them why would they paint it down there? The other thing that amazes me is how The Boy has always painted grass as blades of grass, never once has he painted a swishy mass for the ground. He normally wants to paint mud but was distracted on this occasion!

How To Make A Snow Picture

I framed it using a child-friendly picture frame from Ikea which has plastic 'glass' (although I've actually left this out because the painting is so 3D), and I've hung it in The Boy's bedroom for him to enjoy. As the seasons change, we'll do an updated picture to reflect the changes in nature.

Sponsored Post: British Gas Smart Meters

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I pride myself on being a bit of an eco-warrior; we reuse and recycle where possible, use resuable shopping bags 100% of the time (although living in Wales we have little choice), compost all fruit and vegetable matter and utilise the food waste initiative in place through our council, and I am instilling this in The Boy, ensuring he has a good ethos when it comes to waste management. He is sometimes better than us, insisting on something going into the recycling bin that we've said could go into the 'normal' bin.

Following a rather startling and shocking gas bill about five years ago (£600!) because of an inaccurate meter reading, and my fondness of the gas fire, we have cut right back on the amount of fuel we use. As the average household wastes £150 a year by leaving the boiler on in an empty house, the central heating is on an efficient timer which is pretty much always on during the days I'm not at work, but on a low temperature maintaining an even heat. We have thermostatic controls on every radiator, and in the rooms which aren't used often, the radiators are turned right down. I also haven't used the gas fire in three years! Not only because of the bill, but because I was too worried about The Boy!

The one area where we need a little work on our energy usage is with electricity. Granted, every light bulb in the house that could have an energy-saving light bulb in it does have one, but the dining room and kitchen lights are pretty and aren't compatible. The oven is switched off at the plug (albeit to prevent little hands from fiddling with the knobs) and we do try and turn the television off at the wall rather than leave it one standby. We rarely use the tumble dryer, but at this time of year it does tend to get more of a look-in than I'd like. However, I'm well aware that we're probably still using too much electricity and when your household income is three-quarters of what it used to be, but your outgoing 150% of what it was pre-children, trying to find anything that can help financially is a necessity.

One of the newfangled gizmos which has been created to help monitor energy usage is the British Gas smart meters. As the 2019 target set by the Government to have a smart meter in every British home is looming in the not so dim and distant future, British Gas commissioned the Oxford Economics Report which has highlighted that smart meters are a way to help us voluntarily take charge of our energy use and stay in control.

The very ingenious gadgets (one for gas and one for electric) allows for users to set the budget and input some personal information concerning the family's requirements. Real-time use culminating in a daily total is calculated as the energy is being used around the home, which can only help to guide and inform on which devices need more careful monitoring and restricting. These smart meters provide the homeowner and billpayer with control over the fuel used and the bills, an opportunity to monitor where the pennies are being spent, and peace of mind as the readings are transmitted back to British Gas daily, putting an end to inaccurate meter readings (and £600 gas bills!).

For more information on British Gas' energy saving initiatives, be sure to follow them via Facebook and twitter.

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How To Make A Pirate Island

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A fortnight ago we took delivery of a new fridge-freezer and with that came a lot of packaging. I managed to rescue some of the cardboard packaging from Mr. TBaM before efficiency really kicked in, and as a result ended up with a large, square, shallow, cardboard box.

It took a while for its future use to come to mind, especially as The Boy kept sitting in it to play with beads or his letter formation tray, but eventually we decided to paint it and turn it into a role-play resource.

You'll need:

  • cardboard box
  • blue, white, green, yellow paint
  • sand
  • glitter
  • a sponge
  • glue, paintbrushes and scissors
  • pictures of pirates, palm trees, parrots, pirate flag, and cocktail sticks

pirate craft

  1. Cut up the sponge roughly and glue it down in the middle of the box to create an island;
  2. Paint the inside of the box blue, we used a few different shades to add some definition;
  3. Create some swirly white lines all over the blue paint to give the impression of waves. We also sprinkled some silver glitter on to add some sparkle to the waves;
  4. Paint the island green, again we used a light and dark. We also created a sandy beach for the pirates to land on by painting a section yellow and sprinkling some sand on while it dried;
  5. We then added some pirate items using themed foam stickers and cocktail sticks. You could easily draw the figures and cut them out, or print them from the Internet, but when life's quite frankly too short for that I've used these*.

When the sponge has completel dried, the stick figures can be really easily moved around the island for imaginative play, especially if there's a mutiny and one is chasing the other for the treasure!We also enlisted the help of some other pirates who rowed alongside to help out Captain PegLeg to sort out his motley crew.

A great activity for art development, fine motor skills, imaginative play and developing oracy.

I was sent the item marked * to see what I'd do with it.



How To Make A Pirate Spyglass

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We've been sent a few pirate items to review lately and it's prompted me to have a week of pirate activities. No pirate captain can be taken seriously without a looking glass. It's also the easiest thing in the world to make!

What you'll need to make a pirate spyglass:

  • a kitchen towel roll
  • black paint
  • gold paint
  • gold foil
  • metallic decorating pens *
  • paintbrushes
  • glue

pirate party craft

  1. Paint the tube black and leave to dry.
  2. Paint three gold rings around the tube, an inch from each end and one in the middle. This will help it look like it's one of those sliding ones. Use the metallic pens* to dot gold and silver patches over the other sections for some extra 'pirate bling'.
  3. Once dry, glue around the very tip of each end and cover with gold foil. Leave enough to foil to bend over and glue on the inside of the tube; we don't want scratched faces or eyes!

If you want to see another brilliant pirate spyglass, nip over and check out this 'How To' from the marvellous pirate mummy, Multiple Mummy.

I was sent the item marked * by Yellow Moon to see what I could do with it.

I'm going to be sharing a few pirate activies this week. If you've got anything pirate that you'd like to share, please add it to the linky below to create a great reference for me and others.



Rainbow Weaving (Scrap Art)

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A fortnight ago, I read this post about scrap centres from The Alexander Residence. It reminded me about the recycling centre that I used to visit when I was training to be a nursery nurse, and I wondered if sixteen years later, it was still going. It is, and it's been improved. I had a little think about what activity we could do using the resources that we'd be able to find there.

Then the next day, a post from the Goddess that is Cathy at The Nurture Store popped into my inbox about the new Kids Art Explorers' Challenge. The theme was paper-free art, and suddenly I knew exactly what I was going to be doing with The Boy.

His favourite song at the moment is the 'Mo-mo' song from 'Show Me, Show Me'. We both pretend to be robots, put on our best mechanical voice and do robot arms while singing about the colours of the rainbow. It's quite amusing and I'm trying to get it on video to post, but he runs away screaming whenever I produce the FlipCam lately.

When we finally managed to get to our local scrap centre we had great fun delving in all the bins, finding treasures, discussing what we could use them for, getting over excited with various materials that we had no use for (let alone space) and saving oodles and oodles of dosh.

Originally I'd intended to do this activity on the patio using the bamboo fence. But it's currently submerged in eleventy billion feet of water so I tied netting up against the bannister upstairs on the landing and we did the activity there instead.

I knew the iPad was an essential educational tool! We gathered our resources together, examined a reference picture and discussed which colours we needed. An interesting discussion about what colour indigo is ensued and then a discussion about the difference between that and violet. Try and explain hues to a two year old.

Life became a lot easier for both The Boy and me once I'd remembered he is left-handed and realised that threading from left-right was causing him issues. One of the many things that need reversing when teaching a left-hander.

Admiring our handiwork and our beautiful rainbow!

This was a really enjoyable activity and The Boy loves sitting and feeling the different textures in the rainbow along with singing Mo-mo's song. The total cost of the resources for the activity was £1. (Just ignore the cost of the iPad)

You can search for your own nearest scrap centre here.

—

I'm linking this up to The Nurture Store's Kids Art Explorers Project.

How Future Friendly Are You?

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I like to think I'm a bit of an eco-warrior. It stems from teaching primary school children about the 4Rs for a good few years:

  • Refuse
  • Reduce
  • Reuse
  • Recycle.

I'm a big believer in the importance of reducing the amount of waste we create. Did you know that 85% of the contents of your bin can be recycled, but on average only 20% is? With the targets that have been introduced in this country, many councils are now offering more facilities for recycling: but it's not just about separating your plastic and cardboard, we need to stop using so many resources and so much packaging in the first place.

Therefore when I was invited by Proctor & Gamble to take part in their Future Friendly campaign, I was very excited. The challenge is to follow the Future Friendly Sustainable Living Activity: the seven day plan involves undertaking three inspired but small acts a day, for a full week. To help people who want to take part come up with these three small tasks, there is a rather fabulous little online tool which I thoroughly recommend visiting (click on the picture to have a go) as it can highlight areas in your house to help save energy or use less resources.

Did you know that the average family wastes £680 a year on uneaten food? £680?! That is shocking and such a waste on resources. How many of us just scrape away the scraps or bin the best befores? To help reduce our food waste (and cut down on our portion sizes) I've signed up to the website LoveFood HateWaste which has a nifty section of hundreds of recipes. Simply select the food that needs using up and it will suggest some recipes! (Action 1 done!) I've also started shopping online having planned in advance what food we need to buy for the month without being tempted by all the extra goodies at the ends of aisles. (Action 2). Buying some items in bulk can also cut down on the amount of packaging that is used, e.g. larger packs of dried pasta, washing-up liquid, toilet rolls, etc. (Action 3).

Factoid: Did you know that recycling a glass jar or bottle saves enough energy to power a laptop for 25 minutes? As the average family uses 500 jars a year, that's a lot of blogging and tweeting power!

I've actually followed the online tool above and found all of the little titbits of information that can help me to be Future Friendly. The irony is that it told me to print off the list to keep a reference! Funnily enough, I've saved it as a PDF instead!

Here are some of the 21 things that we will be trying to implement over our Future Friendly Activity:

  1. using watering cans to water the plants as opposed to a hose which uses 1000 litres of water every hour it is on (should be easy enough to do, The Boy's water-table is a great water-butt at the moment!;
  2. turning the washing machine down to 30° instead of 40° (Ariel powder and liquitabs are formulated to work at 30° which uses 30% less energy each wash than at 40°);
  3. use saucepans that fit the hob (this is for hubby not me. He always uses a medium pan on the large gas with it up full-whack. So much heat is wasted over the sides of the pan);
  4. measure out the water that I need to boil before putting it in the kettle;
  5. putting wet (not dirty) kitchen towel into the compost bin, along with scrap paper that's been used on both sides. A good compost bin is full of compost critters; they like small holes and gaps created by scrunched up paper which is biodegradable;
  6. install toilet hippos (a few pounds from DIY stores and can save 3 litres of water per flush);
  7. turn off the extractor fan in the downstairs toilet, it's not needed and uses too much power;
  8. put on my cardigan and slippers rather than knocking on the heating!

I'm not going to write all 21 targets up in this post, but I will pop back in a week's time and tell you which other inspired little acts I've got up to with The Boy.

I was provided with a recycling box and a range of P&G products to help me complete this project. My opinions are my own.

SIGG EcoBottles

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A little over a month ago I was chosen to be the first mummy reviewer for SIGG EcoBottles.

I know some of you maybe wondering who SIGG are, and that's kind of the point of this post isn't it? Ok, so SIGG was founded in 1908 in Switzerland and today is the leading brand of reusable water bottle in the world. SIGG bottles are made from a single piece of pure aluminium and use modern and very funky designs, trendsetters like Vivienne Westwood, Sienna Miller, Julia Roberts, Ashton Kutcher, Zac Efron and Cameron Diaz know what they're talking about don't they? There is even one in permanent collection at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York.

This video of how the bottles are made is actually really fascinating, please take a few minutes to watch it.

Since The Boy and I (see, I can do grammar) have taken charge of our SIGG EcoBottles, we've found them invaulable. The Boy had a few drinks bottles, mostly well known brands of tippy cups and made of plastic, which of course we never left the house without. However, I would often forget my own water bottle. Mainly because I didn't have one! Or I'd end up fishing out a battered plastic one from the recycling and trying to wash it in a hurry to refill, making myself stressed and late. Although being honest here, I'd forget and end up having to buy yet another plastic bottle that gets binned or recycled. In the UK alone 250,000 plastic bottles are dumped every hour.

This is not good. I pride myself on being a little bit of an eco-warrier, in areas that I can be. We recycle everything that we can, and I am always amazed at how much plastic there is, but really we should make more of an effort to prevent the need for this. As a primary school teacher who has taught the theme of environmental impact for several years, I know the importance of teaching about the four 'R's: Refuse, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. Really they should come in that order. Refuse to accept that extra packaging in the first place. Reduce the amount of waste that you are creating by reusing and recycling (Plastic bottles constitute close to 50% of recyclable waste in landfill sites). However, recycling should really come last of all in order to reduce the impact on the world's resources by having to use a process to create another product.

This is where the SIGG EcoBottles come in to adjust an area of my life which impacts on the world in which we live. By cleaning and resuing my SIGG EcoBottle I haven't bought a single plastic bottle of spring water in over a month. I would normally have bought, maybe fifteen? That's fifteen less items of plastic that need a process happening to them in order to be reused. There is of course another issue here. We live in Britain. We have good, clean and healthy tap water and there is no need whatsoever to have to buy spring water.

The reasons why I love my SIGG EcoBottle in a nutshell:

  • it is environmentally responsible to reuse a bottle rather than recycle (and saves money!)
  • it is funky and pretty with a nifty little design on it (all the girls in school admire it)
  • because it's made of metal, it keeps the water cool for ages
  • it is lightweight yet very robust
  • it has a variety of accessories, like a fliptop lid to suit your needs.

This is where you can get your mitts on a SIGG EcoBottle and be one of the cool people that is frugal and environmentally conscious.

Competition

I have teamed up with SIGG EcoBottles UK to offer one lucky reader the chance to win this Barnyard Fun bottle for their child. They normally retail for £14.00 so this is a treat indeed and one that your little one will adore.

In order to be in with a chance to win this funky bottle we would like to know how you would make the world a better place! It can be comical or serious, it can be as simple as teaching children to say 'thank you’ or as complex as ‘building clean water fountains across the world’. This is our example.

TheBoyandMe would make the world a better place by cheering people up with our silly and funny antics.

Comment below completing the phrase: "I would make the world a better place by…"

  • One more entry can be gained by tweeting:

I want to win a @SIGGEcoBottleUK with @TheBoyandMe's blog https://www.theboyandme.co.uk/?p=2868

Again please leave an additional comment for this.

T&C

Competition closes Saturday 18th June 2011 at 8pm. I will draw the winner using random.org and notify them that evening. If they have not replied by Monday 20th June 2011 I will redraw. UK entrants only. Facebook and twitter are not affiliated with the running of this competition and have no responsibility for it.

THIS COMPETITION IS NOW CLOSED.

Thank you so much for all your entries into the SIGG EcoBottle competition. There were some fantastic thoughts on how to make the world a better place, from ensuring that everyone was allowed to have at least 3 duvet days a year to by smiling at random strangers.

But of course, in true Highlander style, there can be only one. So using my faithful companion www.random.org I have a winner:

Congratulations Helen Jessup from The Crazy Kitchen! You've won a fabulous Barnyard Fun SIGG EcoBottle for your little one. He's going to love it! And who says being the first to enter doesn't pay off?

Thanks to everyone for entering, please check out my other competitions over here.

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