Disney African Cats Is Awesome

I grew up in the 70's on a TV diet of The Wonderful World of Disney. The already dated True-Life Adventures created my love of wildlife documentaries.

Originally released in the early 1950's the documentaries were unique, enlightening, magical and totally awe-inspiring.
Walt Disney famously said that "Nature writes the screenplays," and last night whilst sitting in a packed cinema with my own children watching African Cats, I totally felt the magic of Disney once again.

The new DisneyNature film is essentially a story of family life. A single mother raising five children on her own and an ageing mother desperately trying to keep up with her toddler. But these are big cats not humans.

Sita is a strong, formidable cheetah with five (very cute) bundles of fluff and Layla, the most experienced lioness of the River Pride is struggling to regain her strength following an injury whilst hunting.

The cinematography on this movie is breathtaking, the Masai Mara planes may look stunningly beautiful but they are full of danger for both Layla and Sita. Each mother struggling in different ways.

I'm not going to spoil the story but African Cats is quite simply the best movie experience I've had in a long, long time. 

As we were at the Royal Premiere along with the Duke & Duchess of Cambridge we also got to take part in a Q & A with some of the crew and listen to the Duke speak about his own conservation work with TUSK. 

It was a truly amazing night. I was with Sonny (11), Biba (10) and Betty (8) and they all loved it too. As Biba said to Betty;

"Not everyone can say they just watched a movie with the future king."

I guess she's right!

If there's one movie you go to see over the next few weeks - make it African Cats.

After a family poll we rate it a whopping 10 out of 10.

Visit the Disney African Cats Site here and take a look at Domestic Goddesque's review too.
African Cats opens on 27th April.
Thank you to Disney for inviting us to such a fab event.

Win A Cybher Ticket and Dodo Pad

Cybher tickets have been sold out for over a week and there are 40+ people on the waiting list but thanks to the ever wonderful Lord Dodo one more lucky blogger will be joining us at the UKs first all inclusive female blogger conference on May12th in London.

The prize includes a Cybher ticket, a newly launched 2012/2013 Dodo Acad-Pad Universal organiser (of the A4, loose-leaf variety) and £25 cash towards your travel.

The new loose-leaf planner/diary fits the binder or your choice wherever in the world you are! It's Dodo Pad's biggest Acad-Pad organizer ever - for students, scholars, teachers and professors or indeed anyone hooked into the college or academic year. Its five columns provide space for a detailed daily timetable of activity (or inactivity) and it's ‘indodispensible’ for logging other miscellaneous appointments whilst incorporating a specially designed Master Timetable to keep track of regular lessons, seminars or lectures.

To enter all you need to do is tell me how many holes you will find in the new Universal Acad-Pad. You will find the answer over at Lord Dodo's Pad.

Please enter using the Rafflecopter widget below. The giveaway closes at midnight (GMT) on Wednesday 2nd May 2012. Terms and conditions can be found here.

Silent Sunday : Nigel Barker Tweets

For Silent Sunday. Do stop by some of the other blogs on the linky.

Bluebell Woods : Silent Sunday

I made all of my children cycle 18 miles around the rather beautiful Rutland Water this week. Betty managed to moan the whole way. I can forgive her because it was the first time she has done it under her own steam. It took us over three hours:( In our fitness peak (with Biba 6 and Sonny 7  we could get around in under two hours... we have work to be done but this is just the beginning).

I'm really proud of Betty (despite the moaning!) It is a long way and once we can sit comfortably we will be setting off again!

Future Cinema does Bugsy Malone

Bugsy Malone was one of my favourite movies when I was growing up. I'm not sure what it was that mesmerised me so much, the sadness of Blousey Brown or the cool assurance of Tallulah?

Whatever it was, I jumped at the chance of donning my 20's gear and heading down to East London with my girls to enjoy Bugsy Malone Future Cinema style.

Future Cinema are masters at this kind of entertainment and they really know how to put on a show. From the moment you enter the street you are taken back to 1920's Chicago with live action everywhere you look.
There are gangsters running across roof tops, policeman patrolling the streets and boxers milling around waiting for a fight.

We entered The Troxy through the back door to see that this whole venue had been transformed. We really were part of the action. Dancing girls, a milkshake bar and Fat Sam himself entertained before the movie slipped seamlessly into the afternoon.

We were all mesmerised by the atmosphere and the entertainment and the girls gave Future Cinema's Bugsy Malone a 20 out of 10! It doesn't really get any better than that does it?

Future Cinema presents Bugsy Malone runs until 29th April. See FutureCinema.co.uk/kids for full schedule info.

You can follow Future Cinema Kids on Facebook and Twitter.

How To Switch to a Custom Domain on Blogger

If you blog on blogger you'll be only too aware that Google moved all UK based .blogspot.com blogs over to .blogspot.co.uk addresses a couple of weeks ago. Unsurprisingly it's caused lots of issues including a huge drop in visitor numbers, loss of comments and posts simply not redirecting at all.

All of my personal blogs are on blogger but they all have custom URL's and as a result I haven't experienced any problems at all with the switch over.

The blogger forums are full of questions but not many answers, so one thing you could try is switching to a custom domain of your own.

I know this sounds pretty scary if you don't like to mess with the back end of your blog but since Blogger introduced the ability to buy a domain (through Go Daddy), it's actually really easy to do and you don't have to worry about messing up any coding.

Here's a step by step guide...

My blog address is currently www.sian-to.blogspot.com and I want  it to be www.londonundergroundlover.com. Here's how to make the switch.

1. Open your blogger dashboard and go to Settings.

2. In Publishing click on Add a custom domain. 

Type in the custom domain that you want to switch to.

The domains that you can buy through bloggers are limited to .com, .net, .biz, .org and .info so it's a good idea to do a search to see if yours is available before you start. You can search for available domain names here.

The domain that I want to buy is http://www.sian-to.com, it's available to I'm good to go.

3. Click Continue to registration.

4. Fill in your registration details and make sure the box for Automatically renew my registration every year is ticked.
Please do this because if you don't you will wake up a year from now with your url pointing back to Go Daddy...
I'm talking from personal experience here and it is a stress that you really can do without.

5. Click Proceed to checkout and pay.

6. On confirmation page click on Click here to retrieve your purchase. 
This will take you back to your blog Settings page and you will see that my www.sian-toblogspot.com address  is now redirecting to www.sian-to.com.

And that people is it.

Sometimes it can take up to 48 hours for the re-direct to kick into place. This one was instant as  I set up a new blog to walk you through the process.

Please note that Blogger domain registrations are limited to .com, .net, .biz, .org and .info and the registration price is $10 a year (about £8).

I had to start a new blog to walk through this step by step... so www.londonundergroundlover.com will be the new home to my Instagram tunnel fixation. I do hope you will stop by from time to time?!

Any probs give me a shout and I will endeavour to help.

UPDATE: If you've worked through this tutorial and you are getting the 'Another blog or Google Site is already using this address' error, you will find a simple fix here.