Raisie Bay

Control My Pain Project

a woman in bed, black and white photo

The control my pain project is an online course which helps those with chronic pain restore their health, comfort and happiness.

The six week holistic pain management program leads you week by week into understanding your pain and how it affects you both mentally, physically and socially. It provides you with resources that you can use to thelp you reduce your pain and improve your attitude towards it.

The Program

The program is split into six weeks, but takes around an hour and a half maximum to work through the videos and quizzes. You are then required to put what you have learned into practice for the rest of the week. The aim is that by the end of the program you will have practised each weekly tasks so that they become natural to you.

There is nothing too difficult to digest or to do, the program is pretty easy. It explains everything really clearly and the tasks and quizzes are not difficult to complete.

The program begins by explaining the way our body, mind and what we can physically do are all connected. You are introduced to the biopsychosocial approach to pain management. For this you will learn about how your thoughts and feelings affect both your pain and your social life.

You will learn how things like mindfullness and communication skills can improve your mental and physical health. You will also learn how to practice these alongside relaxation and thought processing techniques.

Each week has video presentations by Pam and Jackie. Jackie is your guide and Pam is a professional  in pain management and rehabilitation and has over thirty years experience.

My Thoughts

The program is a detailed weekly plan which teaches you why an holistic approach can work, what techniques work and how to put them into use.

Personally, I already use a lot of the techniques described but I did identify some problematic areas that I still have and I am putting what I have learned into practice.

Of the techniques that are offered that I already use I can sincerely recommend them. A lot of people with my condition spend a lot of time in the Accident and Emergency Department. I am convinced that the reason my visits have been more limited is because I know of these techniques. During an attack I am able to control my body’s responses with my mind and relaxation techniques. I truly believe that everything is connected and a calm and relaxed approach can improve your physical condition.

I am sure that if you do not know these techniques you will be able to relate to the opposite effect. Just think to a time when your emotional distress has left you feeling physically drained or in pain. Excessive crying can leave you exhausted and may even give you a headache. 

Support and Information

Signing up to the program gives you access to a closed Facebook group and support by e-mail. There is also lots of extra information which supports the program available on the website in the form of a blog and a load of downloadable resources.

If you want to know more you can sign up to a free masterclass in the form of three videos sent by e-mail, this gives you a real feel for the program. 

Joining the program gives you the full course and all  the resources along with a support group. Full access costs $59, around £45 at the time of posting this.

If you do sign up for the free class or the course, be sure to let me know how you get on and what you think.

Disclosure: I was able to try the course for free in return for my honest review.

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Cuddle Fairy
Lucy At Home UK parenting blogger

Kids Pass, The Family Savings Card

Kids pass have a fabulous offer right now where you can enjoy a whole year of savings for only £34.99. Click the banner above if you would like to know more.

What is Kids Pass?

Kids Pass is a family savings card giving you savings on a whole range of things from food to funfairs. You can search locally for offers or download the app. and search while out or on holiday. There are so many savings to be made.

We used our card when we were on holiday to visit The World of Country Life. We had a fabulous day out and it was great knowing that we’d saved £22.40 on our entry fee.

Cinema Tickets

If you like to going to the cinema you can save up to 40% off your tickets. This includes Odeon, Cineworld, Empire, Vue and other cinemas. Just check which is nearest to you and print off your offer. Or even easier, take your phone along with you with the app. installed and your ticket is available at all times. 

Restaurants and Take Outs

Don’t want to cook, or away from home? Then you can save money on restaurants and take outs. Offers include 20% off meals at Sizzling Pubs, BOGOF at Papa Johns and Pizza Hut, Kids eat for a £1 at Prezzo, 25% of Frankie and Bennys and Bella Italia and so many more. You may even find offers at your local curry house, or chip shop. And if you are on the road, there is 20% off at Road Chef.

If you get into the habit of checking your app. before buying any food out then you will be sure to save loads.

Holidays and Days Out

Kids Pass can save you loads on holidays and days out. You can claim cash off your Butlins, Haven, Parkdean or Away Resorts or Forest Holidays booking. Or if you wish to stay at Alton Towers, Legoland, Chessington or Thorpe Park too. There are also savings at EnergyKids and Clubzone.

The Days Out section is huge and includes all sorts of Adventure Parks, Farms, zoos, aquariums, Go Ape, Bowling, ice skating, swimming, soft play, you name it, you’ll probably find it on Kids Pass.

How Does it Work?

For your fee you can search the site for hundreds of savings. The site is easy to navigate with everything neatly divided into categories. You can choose to look at offer that are near your location, or search for offers on a map. It also keeps a record of all your savings so you know just how much you’ve saved. When you’ve found your offer you can just read the terms and conditions and print off your tickets.

The app. is much easier as you can use it on the go, and there is no need for printing your ticket as you can use your phone to display the relevant details to claim your discount.

To get good value out of your Kids Pass, you do need to check it regularly. That’s why it’s best to get the app. on your phone. Then every time you have a day out or want to order a meal. Obviously, the more you use it the more you will save.

If you are not ready for a full years membership then you can try Kids Pass for 30 days for only £1

Be warned, these offers will be ending soon though! 

I am an ambassador for Kids Pass so anyone joining through my links will earn me a commission. I have, however, brought you a honest description of the program and I have not been paid to write this post.

Halloween Days out coming soon!

a little boy putting a scary pumpkin into a giant dinosaurs mouth.
Mix It Up Linky
Sticky Mud and Belly Laughs

Stick it in Your Family Album

Hold it, Flash Bang Wallop, What a Picture

I feel like such an ‘old timer’ sometimes. I remember the days when you would go on holiday taking your camera and films. You’d snap away, not sure of what you were capturing, they were they days of strangers nostrils and chopped of heads. You had to be careful of what photos you took, the films would only give you about 24. If you were lucky you would have a replacement or two, but it wasn’t cheap getting them developed. And a little disheartening if your photos didn’t turn out the way you wanted them to. It was a gamble when you took your films in to be processed. Would your photos get printed, was the film damaged in transit, did you get the shots you were trying to, will your film get mixed up with someone else’s? After a couple of days you’d go back and collect your little paper wallet holding your memories in printed 4 by 6 photos all ready to stick in your album. If you were lucky, you might get a deal where a photo album was provided for free. 

a little girl on the beach, black and white photograph taken in 1971

The Digital Age

I remember my first digital camera. Looking through the little viewfinder was a hard habit to break. Then it did feel a little silly holding your camera out and looking at the view in the screen on the back. It’s second nature now, my current camera doesn’t even have a viewfinder!

With digital cameras came photo freedom. Now if you chop someone’s head off in a pic you can just delete it and try again. Of course, with the screen showing you what you are capturing there really is no need to chop off their head…unless it’s an ugly relative that you’ve never got on with…shhh!

Also, you are no longer restricted in the number of photo’s you can take. Go on snap away at that seagull, you can take 30 shots if you wish, just delete the ones that don’t turn out the way you want. On my recent holiday I took around 300 photos and my husband about the same. That’s way more than the 24 to 48 I had before digital cameras.

little girl on the beach in 2013 playing in the sand.

Cameras or Phones?

Unless you are a professional photographer there is very little need for a camera these days. Most phones take excellent quality photos. A cheap or free editing program will get them looking almost as good as a professional photo. I have a bridge camera which I no longer use, I only ever used it pre-programmed anyway and it wasn’t very good when I experimented with it. I’m just not a natural photographer. The other thing about professional cameras is all the stuff you have to carry around with you.

So, I bought a little camera to take on holiday. Nothing fancy and the same size as my phone. I wanted the camera because it was good for videos. It has a much larger memory card than my phone and the video quality is better. I was able to store hours of video footage. The downside is, I now have to edit it all.

boy paddling in the sea taken in 2018

Stick it in Your Family Album

I have boxes and boxes of photos and albums from past times. I could never part with them. But with digital photos there are quadruple the amount of memorable captures, what do I do with those?

My first step is to upload many of them to Facebook. I don’t post much on Facebook now but it is a great place to store your online pics. Are they safe there, I’m not sure? Will they be stolen even though I only share them with friends, I don’t know? But I have photo albums going back to 2008 and have had no issues so far.

I also like to keep copies, and the rest of my photo’s that I don’t share on my computer and on memory sticks. They all have to backed up at least once.

But what I like doing most is making photo books. I love them. They remind me of good old fashioned photo albums but where the photos do not drop out or fade. You can place them decoratively like you are making a scrap book, but with a lot less mess and effort. And, they look good and are great for looking through and reliving those memorable moments. 

What do you do with your photos, all those precious memories? Have you ever made a photobook?

Printerpix

I love Printerpix and have had many photobooks from there. The site is really easy to use and has some great offers available. 

You can get wedding photos and gifts with 35% discount, the great thing is you can buy the voucher now and use it anytime in the next six months.

You can create personalised diaries, planners and calendars for students in a special back to school offer 30% off using code SAVE2018

Printerpix also offer personalised gifts, prints, canvas, Instagram prints and, my personal favourite, photobooks. 

I’m currently in the process of creating my holiday photobook and although it’s time consuming it is easy to save what you’ve done at any stage and go back to it later.

I still have boxes of photo albums, but now I also have a bookshelf full of photobooks. Memories captured forever.

Mix It Up Linky
Sticky Mud and Belly Laughs
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All The Beautiful Lies – Book Review

All the Beautiful Lies

On the eve of his college graduation, Harry is called home by his step-mother Alice, to their house on the Maine coast, following the unexpected death of his father.

But who really is Alice, his father’s much younger second wife? In a brilliant split narrative, Peter Swanson teases out the stories and damage that lie in her past. And as her story entwines with Harry’s in the present, things grow increasingly dark and threatening – will Harry be able to see any of it clearly through his own confused feelings?

Harry is devastated by the sudden death of his father, but was it really an accident. And who is the strange young girl who turns up at the funeral that no-one seems to know. As we follow Harry’s story of investigation into what happened to his father we also delve into the history of his Step-Mother Alice.

Alice lost her mother as a teenager and soon after began a relationship with her step father. They kept it secret, but some local residents had their suspicions.

As the plot thickens, Harry discovers the stranger at the funeral was having an affair with his father, but soon after his discovery she ends up dead. Harry suspects his Stepmother has something to do with his Father’s and his mistresses deaths but can she really be guilty. As we discover, her past is not so innocent.

In the second part of the book we discover the murderer and hear of a much darker history of the Stepmother Alice. Then to top it off there is even more twists to end the story.

My Verdict.

A dark psychological thriller which had me gripped from the start. An interesting take on a very difficult to talk about subject, interspersed with mystery and murder. It stirs up a lot of emotions and will not be an easy read for anyone who has been a victim of child abuse of a sexual nature.

Audible

I listened to All the Beautiful Lies on Audio Book and I get my books from Amazon Audible. I love audio books, I can listen while I crochet or even while doing the housework, it means I don’t have to put down my book. 

You can get any type of books in Audio, fiction or non-fiction. I love audible because you get the chance to listen to an sample before you buy. I like to do this because I have to be sure I like the voice I’m going to be listening to. 

Each month I get a free credit to buy any book I wish which can be great value. One month I chose the entire works of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes read by Stephen Fry. I’ve got a lovely library of audio books that I can return to at anytime if I wish.

Boo has just decided that she likes listening to books to, so I can put the app. on her phone and she can listen to children’s books. 

When you sign up to Audible you get the first three months at half price and then it’s £7.99 a month which is usually less than the price of the book you can get with your monthly credit. It’s up to you if you buy more, I tend to stick to the one a month, although sometimes they have some amazing offers starting from just 99pence. 

Audible also offers some exclusive podcasts to listen to for free from the likes of Stephen Fry, David Mitchell and Sue Perkins to name a few. Whether you want to listen to comedy, drama or history there are so many genres to choose from.

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate and this post contains affiliate links which will make no difference to your costs but may earn me a little money if used. Thank you

The Pretender – A Fantastic New Fun Game for the Family

We love playing games and I love it when I get a new one to review. The Pretender is a new game from Gamely, we reviewed  another Gamely game back in April, you can see what we thought of Randomise.

The Pretender comes in a box, just a little bigger than a box of playing cards. It is indeed a card game, but it’s so much more. Here’s a brief description.

The Pretender is a hilarious social deduction game of mini-charades, bluffing and suspicion that will make you laugh and get you thinking creatively. Each round, every player has the same identity except for the Pretender.  The aim of the game for the other players is to discover who the Pretender is, while the Pretender must fake their way through the game, escaping detection and trying to work out what on earth everyone else is miming!

In The Box

Quite simply you get a number of cards and a small instruction sheet. Each card has two categories and you get six of each. Each category has 10 entries to choose from. However, one of the cards does not have any entries, it just says Pretender 10 times instead.

The cards are all you need to play the game, well, along with your imagination.

 

How To Play

The rules are pretty simple and the game can be played by most ages. However, it depends on the players how cleverly you play the game.

The game is for four to six players and if you have less than six you will need to take away the excess cards, but make sure the pretender card is still there. Then the cards are shuffled and randomly passed to each player. One of the two categories is chosen before play and then whoever is chosen to go first will pick an entry from that category.

The pretender will not know what has been chosen, apart from the category, so they will be playing blind.

Each player in turn then mimes the chosen entry and the Pretender has to try and guess what it is for their turn. Or just wing it. When everyone has had their turn they players then choose who they believe the Pretender to be by pointing to them.

If they guess right the Pretender has one last chance to turn it around by correctly guessing what the entry was.

Example

The category chosen is sea creatures, and the entry chosen octopus. Each player has to mime octopus and the Pretender has to guess that they are miming octopus and mime it themselves. Of course this becomes very difficult if the Pretender is going first. Their only hope then is to pick any sea creature to mime and get away with it.

The players are faced with the dilemma, do they mime it really good so that they don’t get chosen as the Pretender, but risk the Pretender guessing it easily. Or, do they mime it obscurely so that the Pretender doesn’t get it, but risk being pointed out as the Pretender.

Winning

The winner of the game is either the Pretender, who doesn’t get spotted, or knows the correct entry. Or the other players for guessing the Pretender correctly and the Pretender not knowing what the entry is.

Conclusion

It’s a simple game that is not so simple. The rules are easily picked up but the skill lies in how well you play it.

The recommended age is 12 years but we played with an 8 year old. He found it quite difficult at first, especially when he got the Pretender card, he gave the game away immediately by exclaiming ‘my card says nothing but pretender.’ He did actually get the hang of it though after a couple of rounds.

We love that this is a compact game which can be taken anywhere and it easy to pick up and start playing. You can also choose how long you play for. It takes around 15 minutes for one turn, and you can have as many, or as few, turns as you like. We find that it’s only fair that we all get a turn at choosing the item from the category.

How to Get Your Hands on a Pack

You can buy The Pretender on Amazon.

This is an affiliate link.

The pretender is from Gamely Games and you can find out about this and their other games by checking out their Twitter,  Instagram  and Facebook 

Other fun games from Gamely include Randomise and Soundiculous

Disclosure: We were sent this game for the purpose of this review, all thoughts and opinions are our own. This post contains an affiliate link to Amazon. This will not affect the cost to you if you choose to buy anything.

 

A little Note About Positive Reviews on Raisie Bay

A little Note About Positive Reviews on Raisie Bay

Some people only write reviews when things go wrong with products, which is good because it lets people know that there could be potential problems. I’ve also seen negative feedback with say things like, I had to return this item because the colour did not suit me…is this useful?

I write reviews on most items I buy because I like to give genuine feedback. If I have a genuine problem with a product I will write my review in the appropriate place.

I write reviews on my blog too, but they are mostly positive. Why? Because I only write reviews for the things I’ve loved. If I don’t love them I let the person who sent me them know with details why and then let them decided if they would rather me write a negative review or not write one at all. It’s always the latter.

This is my blog, my place and I’ll let you know about the things I love. If you want to find out what other people have hated about the product then you will need to look elsewhere.

My reviews may all be positive, but they are still genuine.

Where to next?