See you at BritMums Live!

I'm super excited that I will be attending BritMums Live this year thanks to my fabulously fizzy friends SodaStream! We loved partnering up with them earlier this year to review and give away a SodaStream so I'm super excited to be working with them again! So let's get to the Meet & Greet!

Name: Online I'm Blondie or Melaina25. It's fun to guess my real name just ask Kate who genuinely thought I might be called Randy or Tiffany (I'm neither).

Blog: Transatlantic Blonde (if you didn't know that and are here reading this wtf? Look up!)

Twitter ID: @Melaina25

Height: 5'3 1/2" (the half matters!)

Hair: Long Blonde 

Eyes: Blue

Is this your first blogging conference?: No this is at least my 5th depending on what counts as a conference! Look at the photo I posted on my Meet & Greet for the original CyberMummy--how tiny was Blondie Boy!

Are you attending both days?: Yup!

What are you most looking forward to at BritMums Live 2013?: Meeting friends old and new and I spied a feminist session that I can't wait to learn more about! I think Katy Piper will be a fab keynote, too. I've sorta fallen out of love with blogging for a number of reasons and I'm hoping to have my faith in blogging and blogging community restored.

What are you wearing?: Not sure yet but the pressure is on since I'm a Best Style Finalist in the BiBs! Eek! Chances are whatever I wear I'll have flip flops in my bag to swap into because that is how I roll!

What do you hope to gain from BritMums Live 2013?:

I really want to finally make a photography session; I've managed to miss one at every conference and I have no idea how to use my camera! I'd say new friends but I don't "hope" for that I know that will happen-yay!

Tell us one thing about you that not everyone knows: 

I was a child model from the age of 3-13; so the fact that I pose for every photo isn't *really* my fault! It might also be why Blondie Boy enjoys photo shoots so much :)

Are you going? If you see me grab and say "hi!" I promise I don't bite unless you're holding a Krispy Kreme and then I might take one of your fingers off :) Two years ago I spent longer than comfortable staring at Cherry Healey trying to figure out how I knew her before I later realized I only *knew* her from TV so I'm sometimes hesitant to make the first move!

Sodastream Review and Giveaway!

This post is brought to you by NotBlondeHusband. I wish Blogger made it easier to tell who the author of a post was! I love our SodaStream Drinks Maker but NBH is the one with fizzy history.

To me SodaStream conjures up memories of childhood. I never had one but I remember friends who did and I also remember greatly coveting one, although never quite managing to get my parents to succumb and get “busy with the fizzy”. I was slightly worried that admitting to remembering it may show my age but given I also remember when most people in Scotland had fizzy drinks delivered to their door on a milk float so I decided SodaStream is probably the least of my worries.

Despite the fact that I considered it somewhat of a sevnties/ eighties throwback SodaStream never really went away. It’s always been popular in Europe where apparently more than 1 in 5 households in Sweden own a machine, but it seems to have somewhat reappeared in the UK recently, so when we were offered a chance to test one out I was keen not only to right my childhood wrongs but also to see where the growing move back to SodaStream had come from.

First off I was surprised how easy it is. We tried the “pure” drinks maker. It doesn’t need plugged in, just a work surface to sit on. Initial set up was a doddle and afterwards it’s just a case of screwing on a plastic bottle and pulling a lever. You then add your syrup of choice and hey presto, 1l of fizzy goodness. A 500ml bottle of syrup costs around £3.49 and makes 12 litres, so the savings that can be made on even supermarket own label soft drinks are pretty good.

Aside from fiscally, SodaStream also makes sense environmentally. The bottle used in the machine is reusable, so instead of piling up mountains of empty 2 litre bottles and throwing away drinks cans that we intended to recycle but just never got round to, the SodaStream has reduced the amount of rubbish we create, which can’t be a bad thing.

My main concern about SodaStream was the flavours. When it comes to soft drinks I’m a label whore, supermarket brands are not an option. First time around I remember SodaStream having name brand flavours like Vimto, Tizer and Irn Bru, now it’s all made in house. I needn’t have really worried, the fruit flavours are great and there’s a surprisingly large range of other drinks, clear flavoured waters, natural options and even energy drinks (I found the Red Bull-esque Xstream particularly good). I’m not going to lie though, for me the cola flavours don’t stack up to the name brand equivalents. We started with a sample pack which let us try without buying a full bottle of the syrups. The root beer in particular was a huge success. We’re all root beer fans in our house and as it’s generally imported into the UK it tends to be expensive. £3.49 for 12 litres with SodaStream is a bargain. It’s not hard to find the syrups either. We’ve bought some in both Tesco and Asda, as well as ordering from the full selection on the SodaStream website.

I think the main reason my parents were anti-SodaStream in the eighties was that they were worried that it somewhat relied on a novelty factor, that we’d all be excited to make our own fizzy drink once or twice and then we’d put it in the back of a cupboard and forget about it. So far that’s not been a problem for it: three months on it’s still in the kitchen and we still use it, both for knocking together soft drinks and soda water. In fact we like it so much that I’m pretty sure that it’s a permanent feature.

The SodaStream Drinks Makers are available to buy at most major grocery stores or online via the SodaStream online store starting from £55.99.

The fabulous people at SodaStream are giving you the chance to win a SodaStream Drinks Maker! If you live in the UK leave a blog comment and follow the Rafflecopter instructions to enter.  Competition ends Friday, January 11th at 4am (see widget for hours remaining). See Rafflecopter widget for full Terms and Conditions.
GOOD LUCK! Competition CLOSED.

a Rafflecopter giveaway
Transatlantic Blonde was provided a SodaStream Drinks Maker for review and one for a prize but all opinions and stories are our own. I don't know about yours but my husband only does and says things he wants to say!