Peberdoo's Blog

While searching around on the net a month or so ago I came across a company called KiwiCo. They do age appropriate boxes of fun activities to promote STEAM (previously stem, Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Maths) from 0 to 104 (according to their site). You can get individual crates or a monthly subscription. The concept looked great so I ordered a 12 month subscription. A week or two ago Kieran's first KiwiCo create arrived and we worked together today to make it. The instructions are very simple to follow, all the parts are pre cut and there...

Why do I do this to myself? Well, simple reason, I eat too much and enjoy all the worst foods and I gain weight and get unfit real easy. And I have no problem doing silly things when I put my mind to it. I number of years back I heard about this program from Shaun T called Insanity. I had met someone who did it who said that it worked great for them and recommended I gave it a shot as well. I thought, what the hell, I should give it a go as well. Well, today I just...

In these final weeks of school holidays and still in the time of Covid we decided to go on a family (plus friends) camping trip to Feldkirch in Austria. We had a fantastic week with some greet friends and even though our original plan was to go without our kids and have an adult week away our plans were changed at the last minute and the kids came too. As you can see from the photo above we packed everything, a huge 7x7.5m tent, kitchen cabinet, stove, table and chairs, webber bbq, air mattresses, storage cabinets, bikes, child trailer and...

I have been wanting something like this for the kids for a long time. At first we looked at just buying the packaged products and setting it up the garden. But these days gave me the chance to look into building one for myself. I first started with a plan drawn up of what I thought I wanted it to look like, which then allowed me to put together a shopping list and price the whole thing up. Once I had a plan and the parts needed it was easy to cost it up. Surprisingly it required less material than...

During this lockdown period I am sure I am not the only person to do something that is totally unnecessary. This is just one of those things. The Intex Purespa hottub is a great product that we have very much enjoyed using over the last year, summer and winter. But to be able to enjoy this spa you have to make sure that the temp of the water does not drop below 6 degrees or the spa will not turn on and start to heat up. This is not a problem in the summer months as the water always stays...

Recently we flew from Geneva to Malaysia with Etihad and were a bit disappointed with our experience. We expected a lot more from the middle east carrier as our experiences with Emirates and Qatar have always been very good. So we chose Etihad this time based on price, as we were flying for Christmas and New Year the prices on all airlines were quite high and so when we found a good price on Etihad we thought we would take it. We did not think before hand that Etihad was a budget airline but some of their practices seem to...

This one has taken too long to get around to writing, but a few weeks back we went out with the family to HDiner in Geneva and had a great night. This restaurant is a Harley Davidson themed American diner serving up classics like burgers, hotdogs and ribs while surrounded by plenty of memorabilia. But what really made our night was just how friendly the staff was and how accommodating they were for the family. To start with we were running a bit late, kids will do that at the best of times, and we were also not expecting so...

I would suggest going and getting yourself a cup of tea and some biscuits, as this is going to be a long one. Way back at the start of 2018 we decided to put together a Kilimanjaro trip and started recruiting friends for this idea and looking into the logistics behind it. You have many options when you look into a trip up Kilimanjaro. You can do it all yourself (expensive and guide still required from what I understand) or go with one of the many tour companies who are both foreign and local. We had took the advice from...

Recently we decided to instal solar panels on our chalet in St-Cergue. While it is nice to be able to have green energy this was not our main reason to take this project one. We see ourselves living in this house for a long time and with the number of people in the house, the size and the fact that the whole house, including heating and cooking, is electric our bills were very high. So, right back at the end of last winter we decided to investigate getting panels put on our roof. I actually decided to go with IKEA...

In September we did something that is turning into an annual thing for us as a family. We loaded everyone up in the car, put the bikes on the roof and drove across the continent to a rented accommodation for a week. This year it was Portugal via Andorra on the way there and Bordeaux on the return, which is over 3,500km. The stops being perfectly located to be able to spend the night with the kids, explore the places a little in the morning before continuing the journey. Even though this is not the first long trip with the...