Mari's World
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Guinness World Record 60

Over half term the girls and I went to London to take part in the Guinness World Records 60th Anniversary.  I can remember Guinness World Records right back to my childhood.

Do you wanna be a record breaker yeah? *Mari bursts into song*

Record Breakers

Roy Castle was a regular in our front room as we watched in awe all of the most amazing records being broken the world over week in week out. My brothers and I on many occasion tried to drum up a good idea of a record breaker and many a good evening was spent brainstorming. We received copies of the annual book and thumbed through until the ends were dog eared and we could reel off various records by heart.

What would it be like attending their 60th party?

A. Maze. Ing.

First we got to meet Craig Glenday, Editor in Chief since 2004, the stories he has to tell could have kept us amused all day but instead they brought in some real live record breakers as seen in the top photo.

Paul Hunn Guinness World breaker loudest burp

 

Paul Hunn, above, is holder of the Loudest Burp in the World which he kindly demonstrated for us much to the delight of all of the children sitting and taking in every one of his registered 109.9 decibels.

Rubiks robot made out of lego

The guy in the centre is one of the two men, David Gilday and Mike Dobson, who built a robot out of LEGO Technics to solve the Rubiks cube in under 5 seconds. The robot in action above. Bessie in action below.

Bessie with rubiks cube

 

And Joe to the left is the world record holder of the most bunny hops on a bike amongst others, take a look at my video to see him in action as he hops over our host for the day.

We were split into three groups and off we went on various tasks like choosing our favourite cover for the 2015 Guinness World Records book and deciding which photo out of 6 was the most eye catching. I liked this one.

GWR me and picture

Then we got to have a go at breaking our own world records. There was the moving of jelly from one bowl to another in 60 seconds which Alice and Bessie tried.

GWR jelly record

There was the team effort of sitting on balloons and popping all ten of them in the least amount of time.

And there was the wrapping a present in the shortest amount of time.

We all had amazing fun having a go but sadly no records broken that day.

The day ended as all good anniversaries do with Bubbles and cake. But one last surprise in the street below as we headed off home was the world’s smallest caravan.

World's smallest caravanand the World’s fastest shopping trolley.

GWR world's fastest shopping trolley

60th Anniversary edition of the Guinness World Records Book

GWR 2015 book graphic

First published in 1955 this year is the 60th edition and is packed with new content and a few surprises that will keep many entertained over the next year.

Apart from new records added to the book there is an augmented reality. Download the book’s free app, hover your mobile device over a page and watch the records come to life in front of you. We watched in awe the most venomous spider in the world leap from a page and a dog walk on its front paws too. Amazing! Download the #seeit3D app

RRP £20 and worth every epic penny.

60 years of Record breaking

Interesting Guinness World Records facts

The  Most expensive bottle of wine 1955: £4.93 today £75,000

Unbreakable records since the very first edition include

  1. Tallest man (Wadlow) 8ft 11.1 inches tall)
  2. Best selling single “White Christmas” by Bing Crosby (my nana will be happy to hear this)
  3. Highest grossing movie (adjusted for inflation) Gone with the Wind USA 1939
  4. Richest person (Rockefeller) inflation adjusted – today’s equivalent of £114.39 BILLION.
  5. Largest office building – The Pentagon
  6. Largest diamond – The Cullinan weighed in at 3,106.75 carats in 1905

Records that exist today that didn’t in 1955

  1. Social media – Most tweets per second is 143,199. Most liked person on Facebook is Shakira (25.04.2014) with 90,938,442 likes
  2. Digital music
  3. Ocean rowing
  4. Moon walking/Space travel
  5. Collections – htere are now more than 400 different records on the database.
  6. Body modification – most tattoos, most body piercings and most body modifications on both male and female.

The Works

It all started when I was browsing The Works for ideas for Christmas gifts, I’ve noticed lots of people on my various timelines saying they’ve started their Christmas shopping, one or two have even finished it! I felt I ought to catch up with them. I am subscribed to The Woks newsletter as they often have some excellent bargains and if there’s one thing I like to buy my children it is books.

So I started browsing for some great ideas and I came across the perfect book for the twins, The Disney Princess Storybook collection, a book filled with princess stories. My problem is do I buy 1 or 2? Then I noticed they had the Disney Christmas Storybook collection so I decided on one of each which they can then swap. It will also remind them of their fabulous Disneyland Paris trip this summer. At only £5 each I think these hardbacks are excellent value for money.

Disney Princess Storybook

Intrigued I searched a bit further and discovered they have toys and Christmas Crafts too

So here are my top ten Christmas gifts from The Works

1. Disney Storybooks – £5

2. The Diary of a Wimpy Kid game – Don’t Scramble the Egg Game £17.99 (Looks so much fun!)

3. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles – Leonardo construction set was £9.99 now £3.99

4. Amazing Space Rockets – was £12 buy for £5.99

5. Doctor Who special anniversary 11 doctors edition puzzle 500 pieces  – £4.99

6. Dinosaurs Love Underpants book and jigsaw – £3.00

7. Disney Frozen Art Case 52 pieces  – £4.99

8. The World of David Walliams boxset – was £34.95 buy for £19.99

9. Knit your own baubles kit – £6.99

10. The Stocking Filler section – go there and take a look.

Luckily when you have finished browsing and added a few things to your basket you’ll see they also sell Christmas wrapping paper, very nice prints and very reasonable prices, all delivered to your door, the only thing they don’t off is to wrap the stuff!

Have you found any online bargains yet?

Kindle

I have a new trick and it works really well, you see I don’t have a lot of time to keep up with what’s good to read out there and what to avoid but lots of my friends and family are avid readers.

I was lucky enough to get given a Kindle a while back and it’s perfect for taking on train journeys if I have to go up to London and of course on holiday, I am able to load lots of books on there and read at leisure all on one device.

So what’s my trick? I write a Facebook status update – I know it’s not groundbreaking stuff but I got so many excellent tips that I thought it would be good to share them.

Top books to read summer 2014

  1. Life after Life by Kate Atkinson came out tops with most votes. I am half way through it and love it
  2. Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn. On the Kindle and still to read
  3. The Hundred Year Old Man Who Climbed Out of The Window and Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson. Brilliant read had me hooked all the way through.
  4. The Miniaturist by Jessie Burton.
  5. One Summer by Bill Brysone
  6. The Monk who Sold his Ferrari by Robin Sharma
  7. I am Malala by Malala Yousafzai
  8. The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
  9. Eeny Meeny by M. J. Arlidge
  10. Tandem by Alex Morgan

Other suggestions included: Americanah, We Are Completely Beside Ourselves, Sisterland, Raising my rainbow, Shantaram, The Fever Tree, A Change in Altitude and The Making of Miranda.

Do you have anything to add? Please let us know

troll two three four

We loved this book.

It’s a story of trolls written by Steve Smallman and Jaime Temairik and it’s written in rhyme which makes it fun to read.

Did you know that trolls like to laze about? Did you know they pick their nose and that they like to creep up on goats and shout boo!

This book had us all giggling as we read through but the story is of one little troll in particular Boogaloo who is very sad and lonely.

Boogaloo spots something red flying by and decides to follow it, this red thing takes him on a journey that no other troll has ever made before, they try to stop him but he can’t hear them he is so fascinated with the red thing.

A very sweet story that young ones can relate too and it is beautifully illustrated too.

Disclosure: As Parragon Book Buddies we were sent a copy of Troll two…three… four… for the purpose of this post.

top ten of everything

As a child I loved anything in a Top Ten and  in fact Top Ten lists still do fascinate me. We were recently sent a book to review by Paul Terry – The Top Ten of Everything 2015.

This is a Top Ten lover’s dream book as it covers just about everything you can think of and so much more! From jaw dropping facts about everything from machines to animals and to sport and space.

There’s a Top Ten on the world’s most infamous prison breakouts. Another on deadly pirates. there’s another on epic structures including stomach churning rollercoasters and futuristic buildings. There’s even a movie section that I spotted dad dip into a few times whilst the book was laying around.

top ten of everything

But we decided to put the book to a real test. We asked George our nephew to cast his discerning eye over it and he liked it. He liked it so much that we gave the book to him as he’d only looked partly through it and there is so much information to discover in there.

I asked him the vital question before he left with the book tucked under his arm.

‘I need to know George if you give the book the thumbs up or not?’

He nodded a big yes which was good enough for me and therefore if George likes it then it has the Mari’s World thumbs up .

This mega edition is the perfect reference book for all young discovers who want to learn more about the world we live in and in fact the universe.

It’s published by Hamlyn and the RRP is £14.99.

Disclosure: We were sent a copy of the book for the purpose of this review.