One of the great things about being a Red Letter Days Ambassador is that I get to try out experiences like Tea with a Tiger, which I would not have usually chosen for myself. The Tea with a Tiger experience takes place at Paradise Wildlife Park in Hertfordshire in a village called Broxbourne. The experience includes a guided tour with a member of the specialist cat team followed by afternoon tea at the Treetops Cafe where you can enjoy tea and cake with a view of the tigers. You are then able to enjoy the rest of the park for the day.


Our guide was really informative as we walked around the park. I was expecting the talk to be more focused on the Big Cats, but it was really about all the animals we passed on the way over to the Treetops Cafe. Here is a short video to give you an idea of some of the animals you can see.


I have to admit I have mixed feelings about zoos. However, our guide did make me feel more comfortable about them. He explained that Paradise Wildlife Park was previously Broxbourne Zoo which wasn't the nicest of places with small cages. A new owner is turning this around and they are going through a process of building new enclosures and making it a nicer environment for the animals. Whilst you may look at the cardboard around this tiger in the video and think that its rubbish that hasn't been cleared away, it is actually enrichment. To make things more stimulating, a treat is often hid inside some boxes so that the animals can find it.


Our guide explained that white tigers aren't a natural species and often have genetic mutations. You may therefore wonder why there is one at the park. This one had been rescued from life at a circus.



Again he mentioned that whilst we often worry about animals being by themselves, many would lead a solitary life in the wild.

At the end of our tour we went to the Treetops Cafe where we were treated to afternoon tea. If you are expecting a One Aldwych style afternoon tea, you will be disappointed. However, if you are happy to fill up with some sandwiches, cakes and scones then it is just the thing. It was tasty and kept me going so I could explore the rest of the park. It is also worth noting that anyone visiting the park can go here and purchase tea and cake themselves.

One thing I am gutted I missed out on was Paraqueet feeding. If you visit the park, I would make sure you check the times and give this a go. May from Eat Cook Explore did this and it looked fantastic. For £1 extra you can feed the birds with a pot of nectar.

The park is quite small meaning it is great for little ones to walk around. There are a number of playgrounds and a small train.


The otters are fascinating to watch as are the penguins. The penguins weren't that keen on the cold weather and spent most of the day hidden. However, at 4 o'clock they knew that feeding time was imminent and came out ready for their fish!


Our tour was on a dreary day mid week, and I do feel the park would come to life more on a sunny day in the holidays. Whilst I enjoyed the experience if I was booking one for myself I think I would go for the rather special (if a lot more expensive) Feeding The Big Cats Experience that Red Letter Days also offer at Paradise Wildlife Park. One of the best things about buying a Red Letter Days voucher is the flexibility. If you purchase one as a gift and for whatever reason the recipient isn't sure (why wouldn't your 65 year old Mother want to do an indoor skydive!?!) they can swap it to something more suitable.

Thanks to Red Letter Days and Paradise Wildlife Park for a lovely afternoon.

When we arrived at our Eurocamp Vista mobile home at Marina De Venizia in Italy I was slightly concerned. Not because the site didn't look good. It was the opposite - it looked amazing. Not because the mobile home looked rubbish. No that seemed fine, with everything we would need for the week. My concern arose due to my husbands first question to me.

"So what days does the maid come?"

I panicked. Whilst I had spent my childhood holidays with Eurocamp, my husband had not. Clearly my husband, who is used to 4 and 5 star hotels paid for by his work, hadn't grasped the concept that this was a self catering holiday. Would a man preferring 5 star luxury enjoy a Eurocamp self catering holiday?


Well I am pleased to say that once we had established that maids weren't part of the Eurocamp package, things got better. We had a look around our mobile home and it had everything we needed. We had ordered bedding, towels and beach towels as an extra with the mobile home booking. I would certainly do so again as it freed up space in our luggage.

Tired from travelling, we grabbed a take away pizza from one of the parc's restaurants and headed back to our mobile home to relax.

The next morning we went to pick up our campsite passes and collect our passports which we had left on arrival. The camping passes contained our all important wifi codes! There was one hour of free wifi a day using a special security code. Unfortunately, whilst most of the mobile homes would have been covered by wifi, ours was just a little bit too far out to use from the mobile home. Having said that, I actually enjoyed taking a break from it all.


The Eurocamp (and all other tour opertators) mobile homes were at the far end of the parc. Under the shade of pine trees. With the 30C heat in May, we were thankful for the shade. I didn't realise at first but we were the only mobile home in our row which had a tree in our decking. I kind of liked this. I felt it made our mobile home a bit special. That was until one day a pigeon decided to give me some luck! (or not as it felt at the time.)

We spent our first couple of days exploring the parc. It is located next to the beach, which has lifeguards patrolling. The thing that made our holiday was the fantastic swimming pool complex. Far better than any hotel we have stayed in. It was huge.



Most of the pools were heated, meaning it was a pleasure to get in them. If you wanted to use a sunbed then there was a charge. This meant that they weren't all being kept by someones towel who had disappeared for the day. If you didn't want to pay, there were plenty of places you could leave your belongings. The complex had an olympic sized swimming pool and this is where aqua aerobics took place. There were three "big" waterslides for children over 1.2m (an adult could go down the slowest with a child under this height.) My boys loved the wave pool which was activated 4 times a day, and there were an array of other heated pools for varying ages. There really was something for everyone.



The reason we had decided upon this Eurocamp site was that you could easily do a day trip into Venice. Port Sabbioni is a short drive (5 mins) from Marina De Venizia. Here you can pay between 5 and 7 euros to park your car for the day. A return boat ride to Venice costs 10 euros per person (under 6's are free - well done little man for being 5!) There are also various travelcard combinations you can buy depending on when and where you want to go. A day trip around the islands costs 20 euros per person.

Venice was absolutely stunning. Whilst we didn't get to do the museums due to the boys lack of interest, we did get to go on a gondala ride. This is now little man's favourite mode of transport. At 80 euros a pop (100 euros in the evening) we had to tell him it was a one off experience.


As I said we also visited the islands. I will do a more in depth post on this, but Murano was by far the biggest hit with the children. Watching a man make a horse out of a ball of molten glass is pretty mesmerizing. Walking through a shop full of glass with my husband and 3 boys was slightly terrifying with lots of "be careful" shrieks.



The parc and mobile home had everything we needed. It is perfect for a weeks stay. I loved that staying in a mobile home gave us flexibility. We didn't need to get dressed to go for a lengthy dinner if we didn't fancy it. We could have a light lunch on the decking. We were able to treat the boys to ice creams without having to sell a kidney as we could buy them at the supermarket and pop them in the freezer. If you want to see Venice with kids, I honestly believe this is the way to do it. They had the time of their lives and so did we. Our mobile home even had much needed air conditioning. Venice was a 45 minute boat ride away and we made some fantastic memories.



A big thank you to Eurocamp who provided us with the Vista mobile home in return for an honest review.

These pork and apple burgers are perfect for a summers evening. They are lighter than a traditional beef burger and taste lovely and sweet with extra apple as a topping. I haven't tried it myself yet, but whilst writing up this recipe I have thought that it would go really well with a glass of cider.

I think I was just as excited as my 9 year old when I told him that we were being sent an Air Hogs Hyper Stunt Drone to review. He had recently been asking if we could get one and I stalled him with the "lets put it on the Birthday list" excuse. If you have been looking at getting one yourself you will see that there is some variability in reviews.



The instructions are adequate but a little confusing, mainly as all languages are written together. The drone can be flown as it is, or with the roller cage. The advantage of the roller cage is that you are less likely to break the rotor blades and you can (with some practice) get it climbing up walls and across the ceiling.

First you need to charge the drone. This is done using a USB lead. The controller needs fitting with two AAA batteries.



When you turn on both you need to flick the throttle so that it will pair and then it should start to fly when you hit the throttle.

We had a few hiccups with using the hyper stunt drone. After it initially flew, it then gave up and just rolled around the ground. It took me ages to work out what was wrong, but it appeared than when it had crashed it had got some dust or hair stuck in the rotors. Once I took them off and cleaned them, it flew again.

The key to the enjoyment of this toy, is learning to fly it without breaking the rotor blades. We have broken two and have 2 spare ones left. I would therefore recommend that whilst you are learning to fly the drone, you keep it inside the roller cage as this will protect the part more.



There is no doubt that this is a fun toy and that applies to adults too! The age rating of 8+ is appropriate as younger children could easily break it. Only time will tell, to see how long it takes before we break all of the spare rotor blades that come with it.

In short, really fun but takes practice to fly and finds all matter of tiny dust particles and hairs that are in your house.

Photo Credit JML

Phil Vickery's Pineapple With Chilli And Vanilla Syrup

• 100ml cold water
• 150g caster sugar
• 1 vanilla pod, split and seeds scraped out (I didn't do this as I have a vanilla grinder so I used a few turns of this.)
• 1 small red chilli, split with seeds removed. Finely chopped.
• 55g unsalted butter
• 1 medium pineapple

I have been impressed with the non stick properties of the Copper Stone Pan that I was given and its ease to clean. I am also looking out for Phil's latest cookbook which will be out in November. He is working with Diabetes UK to produce a cookbook which focuses on healthy eating for everyone and you could see his passion for the subject when you spoke to him.

Have you tried any products from JML? What products from their range would you recommend?

I decided that I would use crunchy peanut butter as the main fat content to my cupcakes and add in some chocolate chips to compliment this.

For the frosting I used smooth peanut butter again as the main fat content. The frosting was thicker than usual but had a fantastic flavour. Melted chocolate and a slice of Snickers bar added to the luxurious topping.

Snickers Cupcakes

• 3oz crunchy peanut butter
• 1oz butter
• 3oz caster sugar caster sugar
• 2 eggs
• 4 oz self raising flour
• 50g chocolate chips

Pomegranate and Apple Overnight Oats

• 2tbsp porridge oats
• 2tbsp plain yoghurt
• 2 tbsp pomegranate seeds
• 1/2 a Gala apple
• 5 almonds
• A splash of milk

I have to say that I was pleased with how easy they were to make. Many recipes will tell you to shallow fry them. Whilst I am sure this would make them taste delicious, I chose to use less oil to make them slightly healthier. I am pleased to report that they still tested great.

This recipe will make 4 slices of Prawn toasts which can be cut into 16 triangles.

Homemade Prawn Toast

• 200g of cooked prawns
• 1 clove of garlic - chopped
• 4 slices of white bread 
• 2 tsp of miso paste
• 4 tsp of light mayonnaise
• sesame seeds
• 1-2 tbsp of olive oil

My friend recently took me to an interior design shop, where quite frankly I could have spent a fortune. It was also great for ideas. There was a bed which had quite a plain duvet cover and then on top of it were some textured cushions which really made the whole bed look luxurious. I decided to take on this approach for my new bedroom.



I had actually been looking for a duvet cover for quite some time without much success. When an e mailed landed from Home Space Direct  I thought it was a great opportunity to see if ordering online would work for ordering duvet covers. I actually found myself lost for hours looking through the duvet covers available. There are a range of prices which appeared competitive compared to some of the other websites I had been looking at for such items. I eventually decided to go for this Grosvenor white duvet.

As you can see it has a very subtle line pattern. It is 1000 thread count 70% cotton and 30% polyeseter. It is comfortable to sleep in, looks fresh and can be machine washed and tumble dried.

For the lighting, I was really pleased that my Cable and Cotton ball lights matched the new room. I decided to hang these from a small hook from the ceiling. Another matching item is my "likes" poster that my sister made me. It still makes me smile that she put that I dream of being a number one blogger, but missed off a strong coffee to put down wine as my drink of choice! Actually she is probably right!






On my husbands side of the bed we have our old bedside lamp and a collection of books that match in colour. I have left these as they match the ottoman at the end of the bed, however, I am thinking that I shall look for more of a grey coloured lampshade for it, to tie in better.

I picked up these grey cushions from Asda which were an absolute bargain. The velvet style ones were £5 each and the diamante ones £7. I think they help give a luxury and relaxing feel to the room.


So there you have a peek into my new master bedroom. The new bedding really has made it feel more inviting. It put my old white duvet to shame as it turned out it wasn't that white anymore. What tips do you have for creating a relaxing master bedroom.

I loved that the meals came all ready to freshly prepare with everything measured out. At first glance I thought the portion sizes were on the small side but once cooked they were perfectly sized for me and my husband.

If you are thinking of trying a gusto box I have an affilate link you can use by clicking here. This means you will get £25 off your first box and I would get £15 credit to my account. You would need to go in and pause your subscription though as it automatically sets you up on a  weekly delivery. Personally, that is too much for me and I have paused mine now. Every week I get an email showing me their new dishes and I do plan to order the odd box here and there as I want to try something different. It is like having a recipe book delivered with all the ingredients to easily make it so is a great way of trying new dishes.

Have you used a food subscription box? How did you find it?