Candyfloss & Dreams

Author: Kat Candyfloss

Break the Curse – Fairyloot Unboxing

Here I am unboxing the March box from Fairyloot which was themed Break the Curse and featured themed items from favourite cursebreaker fandoms. The box was massively delayed and finally got to me on 1st May with worldwide shipping delays so I was excited to finally opening it and I’m looking forward to joining in with the group Readalong next week. I’ve done a little unboxing video which you can watch here.

The box included some really lovely bits such as:
A gorgeous cursebreaker book sleeve designed by @eviebookish inspired by A Curse So Dark and Lonely
Raven Boys headband illustrated by @taratjah inspired by The Raven Cycle
Wonderland passport cover designed by @noverantale inspired by Heartless
Tumbler with a quote from Queen of Nothing designed by @noverantale
Lanyard designed by @catarinabookdesigns and with a Caraval theme
Genie notepad designed by @catarinabookdesigns
Two tarot cards inspired by Throne of Glass and designed by @gabriella.bujdoso
Book of the Month is Bone Crier’s Moon by Kathryn Purdie

June 28, 2020
How We Are Crisis Schooling

When schools closed in the UK due to the pandemic I kind of prepared myself for doing this long term. We are not home schooling right now, it’s not worth the arguments and quite frankly I am not in the mood or motivated enough to dedicate my day to fun filled home schooling. Some parents have been, which is amazing, some kids are back at school and having a great time. Some kids are kind of caught in the middle, like my nine year old daughter.

Evie is supposed to be in year 4, approaching year 5. She’s not one of the year groups the school is open to and we are not key workers. I don’t mind her being her really, so I’m find with her being off until September. I know she’ll catch up, I know we will probably be doing a mix of blended learning next term aswell as she starts year five. I’m not really worried about her education at her age.

However, I thought it might be helpful to share the stuff we are doing for very laid back crisis schooling that Evie is enjoying. It’s pretty parents hands off rather than helping with the odd question, Evie can follow the instructions well enough and it’s keeping her busy and occupied. Our schooling time is generally between 9-1pm with some breaks.

Evie does the three daily lessons for year 4 on BBC bitesize
Two pages of five workbooks which include comprehension, telling the time, decimals and fractions, French and grammar and punctation.
Reading around ten pages of a book a day
Playing a maths game like timestables rockstars
Two Mrs Wordsmith word-building sheets
Mindfullness colouring/emotional learning
Topic – the tudors where we use the home school learning pack
We need to get out for more walks really and aiming to do this daily for 30 minutes.

This allows me to get what I need to do, done and occupy Felix. Adam usually helps her with the maths questions and we are able to check her work after aswell. It’s not perfect, but it is something.

Over the summer holidays we won’t be doing some big school catch up thing but we will continue with some of the things, mostly the mindfullness, reading and maths games. I don’t want to stop doing everything because the days will be very long and boring but I don’t want to continue focusing on school work and lessons. I want to take the pressure off a bit and have more flexibility. That being said, Evie will hopefully be going to her dads in July and August as more things are opening up which will be so good for her.

June 27, 2020
Nevernight Book Review

This month I finally started reading Nevernight, the first in the Nevernight chronicles and I am so glad I did. It was part of a monthly buddy read with a group of other readers, some who had read the book before and some who were reading for the first time. I guess I was inbetween as I’d had the audio book for a while and had heard the epilogue so I knew what was coming but that made the journey getting there so much more interesting.

The book has an unusual format which I’ve not come across before but I really liked it. Part one was full of back and fourth chapters explaining the past and present, with our protagonist Mia on her way to the red church to train to be a blade; an assassin (my kind of book for sure!). The flashbacks paved the way for the the journey to the church. The book also includes lots of footnotes, some quite lengthy and some short, snarky and snappy which I loved. The footnotes provided an interesting way of getting extra lore across in this new world in a way that is more natural to the storytelling because it didn’t make sense for the character to have to explain in the book. The book is narratted, (I suspect by Mr Kindly maybe?) and the footnotes kind of carry that across better than the third-person style text does.

Mia is such a badass character. She’s smart, interesting and confident, sometimes overly so due to her abilities as Darkin and having her shadowcat drink her fear. I mean that would be a pretty cool thing, right? To be able to drink ones fear away. I imagine I’d get a lot more stuff done if I wasn’t held back by certain fears and anxieties. The book is brutal, def one for mature eyes and has sex, a lot of blood (a lot) and violence throughout. There are moments of real laugh out loud humour too, which I loved.

I’m excited to read the next book, Godsgrave and finish the trilogy with Darkdawn because I have no idea where Mia will go next. I can’t wait to follow her journey though. You can buy Nevernight below using my affiliate link.

June 26, 2020
Introducing #BookChatwithKat

#BookChatwithKat is a new community hashtag I have created to use on bookstagram. This is to help share bookish realated content. If you use the hashtag bookchatwithkat on your IG posts I will regularly do shoutouts and share to my stories. I will create bookish photo challenges and templates to use. I want to use the #bookchatwithkat tag so that I can find more book reviews, bookish photos and connect with book lovers.

Creating a Hashtag #BookChatwithKat

So I’ve long been wanting to create my own little bookish community – a place to share books, reviews and enjoy the fandom together. My first step in this has been creating a community hashtag on Instagram. I would love it if you used this hashtag with any book reviews, book box unboxings and general bookish chat. I’ve also created a July Photo Challenge with a bookish theme and I’d love to see you use the prompts to create fun bookish photos.

the bookchatwithchat photo challenge for July

I use photo challenges to inspire me to take new photos and showcase and talk about my favourite books. I want to grow this as a community so I’m excited to see what other content will be shared. I’d love to create an online bookclub to help arrange buddy reads, do reading sprints and challenges. Hopefully, I will be able to do giveaways in the future too.

I feel like I’ve come into my own by changing to a bookish aesthetic and I’ve met some lovely people along the way. I’ve found some amazing small businesses that create bookish inspired goodies. Mostly, I love being able to geek out on my favourite fandoms and characters with others. It’s been a part of me I guess I haven’t really talked about much. Friends know I like to read but maybe don’t get quite how much I love the merch created from these amazing worlds.

I’ve also created some IG story templates for people to use for reading progression and TBR lists. I hope you will join me!

June 25, 2020
Encouraging Children to Read with Usborne Books
Ad – we received some books in exchange for this feature.

I have always loved books and been an avid reader, but for my daughter it’s much more of a challenge. She lacks the patience to sit in and escape into a new world and so I’ve been looking for ways to encourage her to read, learn and continue putting her mind at work. Evie is really practical and has an excellent memory (unless it’s remembering if she tidied her bedroom!) so I’ve found books that teach her facts, skills or workbooks are the best kind for her to read. She loves a magazine as it’s full of stories and activities and we’ve found several comics on her kindle that she can read and absorb the pictures easily. Looking through the vast amount of books that Usborne Books offers there are plenty in this category that allow my daughter to find new ways to challenge her.

There are a great range of resources for home learning too with encylopedias and practical workbooks to choose from. One Evangeline recently recieved focused on anxiety which is something she has and is perfect for everything going on at the moment. It’s full of advice and practical activities for children to do to help guide and understand their emotions at such a surreal time. The unworry book has plenty of mindfullness and emotional based activities which was presented really well.
My son, however, still being very little at 20 months, absolutely loves books. He loves having stories read to him and fully engages with any book that includes moving pictures, lift the flap or textures. We have a few from usborne books that include these sort of features. He particularly loves the ‘Are You There Little (baby animal)’ we have Fox and Tiger. I am hoping to continue his enjoyument he gets from books by using the picture books Evie had as a child.

F reading on a comfy beanbag

There are lots of ways to encourage a love of books in your children and I think it’s about finding the right format. Usborne Books has a great range of fiction, activity and non-fiction books for children of all ages and bound to be something for every child. If physical books are something your child struggles with then I encourage you to consider other media. Audibooks, ebooks or non fiction, instruction lead books might be a way of encouraging your child to read but something that feels important or interesting to them.
June 20, 2020