Author: Scottish Mum

My boys really are x-box fanatics.  If they could get away with it, they’d probably spend more time on the x-box than they would doing absolutely anything else at all in their lives.

The Ben 10 Omniverse 2 X-box game is the latest instalment of the franchise that sees Ben and his Omnitrix alien forms battle new galactic threats.   In this version, Azmuth and Omnitrix enter the Incursean’s Intergalactic warship to try and stop Emperor Mileous.

Littlest has had a few plays with the game after being sent a review copy, and it seems to be hiding in amongst the favourite game pile to go back to over the school holidays.

The general consensus here is that this game is slightly easier than the last one we had.  That’s a welcome finding as they found Alien Destruction quite difficult.  Middler is getting an x-box for his Christmas so this will go perfectly for him to enjoy and potter with while he learns how to use it.

It’s a classic version of kids using Ben’s powers to run around and fight aliens and with some lovely puzzles in the  middle.

I did get slightly confused as our version has a 7 on the front, yet inside it carries a PG and a 12 + rating.   The review copies perhaps go to lots of different countries and perhaps that’s the reason for what looks like several ratings, though the version on Amazon is rated a 12.

The game is fast moving and has kept littlest amused over the last couple of wet, windy and miserable days.  I can see it being used a lot over winter with 3 boys to all work through it.  Would I have bought this.  I suspect the answer is yes for middler who is just entering the world of console gaming at the age of 12.  I’d prefer it to be a little cheaper, but we do get good value with three children to share the games around.

The one thing that is never far from the minds of most of us in winter is just how much it’s going to cost us in energy to keep our homes nice and toasty.  Last year, we had a spell where our heating broke down and it was a very cold winter that we found quite hard to cope with minus our heating.  We found it difficult to keep tabs on how much energy we were using and as a home that budgets, we find it disconcerting not to know how much our bills will be at the end of the year.

The costs for energy are high in comparison to our month outgoings for other essentials and any help to make those costs more obvious and help reduce those costs is very much welcomed by us.

E.ON has launched a special online tool to help you work out how you could make savings and there is a wealth of energy saving information on their website for customers who manage their account online, to help you see how you use energy and where you could make positive changes.

You can even compare your own figures with those of similar homes to see how you stack up.

The tool helps us to take control of our energy use and help us to understand that reducing energy in our homes need to help us stay warm and comfortable while making a difference to the pennies in our pockets.  It’s about helping us to waste less energy now and in the future and allows us to compare our energy use with similar homes in our own area.

Customers will need to register to be able to use the new tool and from then on, they can take greater responsibility over the energy use in their own homes.

As a family, we had got into a very bad habit of leaving many appliances on standby at bedtime, and even when just going out.  We now know what over 30% of us could leave a dozen or more appliances turned on.  It wasn’t something that we even thought about, we had just got into such a bad habit.

E.ON’s website also features a number of handy tips to help you become more fuel efficient, like not leaving your television on standby quite so often. If you’re an E.ON customer you can also use the comparison tool which allows you to see how your home is performing in relation to those in your area – giving you greater motivation to save energy. You won’t need to be a qualified expert to put these into practice, just a dash of common sense will do!

We used to leave many appliances on standby or by leaving them on charge when they had reached fully charged status:

• 4 TV’s
• Sky Box
• Microwave
• Inside and Outside Lights
• Internet Hub
• 4 Phone Chargers
• Printer
• Tablet Computer
• Oven Clock

34% of us admit we leave up to 15 gadgets and appliances turned on at once.  This was an easy area for us to make changes in. We’ve long replaced lightbulbs with energy saving versions, but with 15 spotlights in one room, there was room for improvement. We’ve learned to go round the house every evening and switch off every appliance at the wall. We do make exceptions for the Internet Hub and for 2 mobile phones, but after seeing just how much our meter was still spinning, we turned everything else off, including the cooker clock.

We have a cat and he uses a cat flap.  I don’t particularly like the idea of my animal having to wait outside in the cold to get in, but I did realise that the old seal was causing the flap to blow open in the wind.  Contacting the supplier meant we could replace the seal on the cat flap and stop it opening with every gust of wind.

Our front door was an energy stripper as it has never seem to stop any drafts from coming through it.  It’s quite difficult to keep a home warm if the cold air is constantly coming in and the heat heading out the door, so we identified that something had to be done. With no time nor budget at the time to replace the door, we simply hung a heavy curtain behind the door which slides open when nobody is at home.  We remove it in the warmer months and as the colour blends in with our decor, few people ever even notice that it’s there.  Blocking the draughty door also allows us to keep our heating a degree or two lower to keep the house warm.  That’s a win win situation all round.

Thinking smart about our energy at home could reap rewards for us all.