Well, Christmas was here and gone before I knew it. My daughter turned one this year, so it was all about her! It was a great time, lots of laughs and I got some great gifts. 

Needless to say, there will be a lot more mess in our kitchen over the next few weeks as I experiment with the new toys I got. 

In the new year, some home improvement challenges await me. But, I won't have to do it alone. I received a Craftsman Autohammer under the tree! It's amazing, I was looking for things that I could go and use the new toy on. One stinking nail!

My biggest gripe of the season has to be the number of tie wraps they use when securing a child's toy into place. A little tape and a tie wrap here and there would be fine. But these things are sometimes really tough to unwind, like someone in the factory just thought, "Damn you for having fun, undo this suckers!". We opened a gift and it had (no exaggeration) 6 little black clips on the bottom, with 12 tie wraps to secure a plastic barnyard into a box! Then, a further 2 clips with 6 tie wraps to secure a tractor and trailer. Let's then move onto the stinking horse and cow sat inside the barnyard. They had their own cardboard with their very own tie wraps around their necks, 2 each! I kid you not. 

So, we're sat talking about how to make this quicker and easier next year. It was suggested that you open these up and take the tie wraps out before wrapping them. But, looking at the pile of mangled and torn boxes currently sat waiting to go out to the bin, it's just not feasible. And, even if you were to remove the tie wraps, half of the stuff would fall about. 

There are some toys that have this little black clip tied to them, you twist it and out it pops. Done. Why can't they all just have little black clips? Or sellotape?  Heck, put in non-toxic glue that we can wash off, it would make it easier and quicker than this mess of wires everywhere.