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There’s a wintery theme to this week’s Gadget Watch. As it’s been getting freezing of late, I’ve found something that might make the commute into work on those cold and frosty mornings a little easier - battery powered heated gloves. Just turn them on a few minutes before you leave the house so that they’re all nice and toasty when you put them on.

You lose a lot of heat through your head and your extremities like your hands and feet so these should warm you up a treat.

A few of the battery powered heated glove reviews have mentioned that they use up batteries pretty quick so may I suggest using the rechargeable kind? You can get your hands on a whole heap of batteries here.

Here’s a handy gadget for your holidays, or anytime really. It’s a watch that can also give you mini weather forecasts for the next 12 to 24 hours – you need never be caught out when deciding what to wear again.

The Meteo Weather Forecast Watch works by measuring barometric pressure trends and then converts all the complicated stuff into four easy-to-read icons – sunny, partly cloudy, cloudy and rainy.

There’s also a stopwatch, calendar and alarm functions. And if you get caught in the rain? No worries! It’s water resistant up to 30 meters – I think it would just about get you through even the most tropical storms.

You can pick one up for £39.99 at Oregon Scientific.

I think we can now officially say it’s summer, so to celebrate, I’ve picked out a few summer essentials to help you make the most of the weather before it’s too late.

You can’t enjoy summer without a lovely fruit juice at your side so I’ve checked out which juicer shoppers consider the best. At the moment, the Philips HR1861 is top with 8.6/10. It’s a 2 litre stainless steel super machine that pulverises whole fruit into juice in seconds. Shoppers hardly have a bad word to say about it. Check out the juicer reviews to see for yourselves.

As gadgets are always on my mind, I feel the need to insert a gadget I saw the other week that would be a perfect accompaniment to this juicer. Unfortunately, I can’t find the exact equivalent in the UK but for all of our US readers, you shouldn’t have a problem finding one. It’s a radio controlled drinks and snack holder for the pool. Summer can be a hot and sweaty business so don’t exert yourself, deliver snacks to friends in the pool without even having to move from your chair, or get snacks delivered to you on your lilo without having to get wet. For those of us in the UK, here’s an equivalent snack and drinks float that’s unfortunately not radio-controlled but it’s still pretty cool. All for £19.95.

If you don’t have a pool, how about one of these. It’s a 15 foot pool that can be put anywhere and it comes complete with a cover, ladder, pump and ground cloth. It’s £170 but surely it’s worth it for 3 days of sunshine a year?

And you’re going to need something to chill those drinks in. One of the best rated mini fridges is the Woolworths Micro Chiller. It’s a bargain at £14.

You’ll also be needing somewhere to sit, so how about this eight piece garden furniture set? It’s £199.99 and at the moment, it comes with a free sun lounger, worth £29.99.

And finally, no self-respecting sun worshipper can do so without some tunes. We featured the wireless outdoor iPod speaker a few weeks ago and I think it would be the perfect addition here. The speaker comes with a small transmitter that you plug your iPod
into. You can then apparently wander up to 240 feet away from the
speaker and still enjoy your favourite tunes. Perfect for the garden and wire free.

Some summer selections there. Here’s hoping we get some summer to enjoy them…

With these lovely hot summer evenings we’ve been having of late, I hope you’ve all been making the most of them. Unfortunately, it’s the mornings afterwards that prove a problem. I’ve been making full use of the coffee shop down the road but having added up all of these trips, the outcome was a little scary. It made me think about the prospect of buying a coffee machine. They’re a little pricey but surely it’s cheaper than getting them from coffee shops?

The top coffee maker on Reevoo at the moment is the DeLonghi EN660. It’s got 9.0/10 with 93 per cent of people recommending it. It’s around £174 which is a lot less than I thought it would be.

For those of you on a tighter budget, the Krups KP 2000 DOLCE GUSTO BLACK is only £74 and it has some good reviews too. It gets 8.8/10 and looks a bit like a duck.

If you fancy splashing out, the Siemens TK68E570B is pretty sleek and comes in at a impressive £1,029. It looks the business but you may not be able to afford any coffee to put in it!

Design-wise, I do quite like the look of the FrancisFrancis X1 Almond. It’s around £300 so it’s still pricey but the almond colour gives it a great retro look…and they’re made in Italy so you can’t really argue.

Going all Italian, I’ve also been looking for some tasty recipes for biscotti so that I can impress people with a proper coffee-house experience. I came across this one from the food geniuses over at Yumblog. While you’re there, check out the other amazing recipes but make sure you don’t do it before lunch because you’ll only be bitterly disappointed with your ploughman’s.

Triple Chocolate Biscotti

Preparation time: 20 minutes
Cooking time: 40 minutes
Skill level: Easy - medium
Makes: 50ish
Ingredients
• plain flour - 200g
• cocoa powder - 60g
• caster sugar - 150g
• baking powder - 3/4 tsp
• dark chocolate - chopped - 60g
• 3 eggs - beaten
• vanilla extract - 1tsp
• blanched almonds - toasted - 100g
• white chocolate - chopped - 100g
• salt - 1/2 tsp

Peheat the oven to 180C (gas mark 4)

Put the flour, sugar, cocoa, baking powder, dark chocolate and salt into a food processor and pulse until powdered. Add the eggs and pulse again until a dough is formed.

Tip out onto a floured surface and knead in the almonds.

Divide into 4 and roll out into 25mm x 300mm flat logs. Place onto a paper-lined baking tray and bake for 25 minutes. Cool.

Cut the baked dough diagonally into 15mm thick pieces. Put onto a baking tray and bake for a further 15 minutes. Cool.

Melt the white chocolate in a bowl over simmering water and drizzle over the biscotti in a Jackson Pollock style.

Eat … or store in an airtight container for up to 10 days.

The best days at school were the last days before the holidays when you could all bring your favourite games in to play all day. Mine was Hungry Hippos. Unfortunately, that didn’t make the top five games in this new piece of research by Reevoo but a couple of other favourites did.

Since this weekend’s going to be a shocker – which bank holidays aren’t? – Reevoo decided to have  a gander at which were the best games around so that we could all switch of the telly and share the love with some family favourites.

Top of the fun pile was Pictionary, with some top reviews and a cracking score of 9.1/10.

Probably one of the best board games ever invented came in at number two – Monopoly. Even though it came in second, it did get the top score across all the games in the ‘entertainment value’ category. This version is the ‘Nostalgia’ edition. I’m not entirely sure what makes if different to the one I used to play but I’ll be happy to accept Jax from Penicuik’s word who says “this has been a very good game for many years, but this version is outstanding.”

Third place went to Taboo. 100% of people recommended it but one reviewer did comment that it didn’t have enough cards which made it “very difficult to continue playing with a surprise factor”.

Not sure how this got on the list but somehow the Simpsons Chess Set beat some of the greats, like Scrabble to take fourth place. Being a girl all for the classics, I can’t say I’m too impressed but a lot of other people were. Selina from Aylesbury thought it was “nicely presented and very good value. The chess pieces themselves were solidly made” – ahh but you can’t make words out them now, can you, Selina?

Fifth went to a true childhood favourite – Uno. You can’t beat its simplicity and its ability to cheer up even the most tedious of car journeys. It was beaten by the Simpsons in the value for money and design/build categories. Frankly, it should wipe the floor with the aforementioned spin-off chess set but the masses let me down.

Oh well. Whatever your preference, make sure you bring back the board game fun over the bank holiday. You can find all the board game reviews at Reevoo.

Full results below:
1. Pictionary
2. Monopoly Nostalgia
3. Taboo
4. Simpsons Chess Set
5. Uno Extreme

I know it’s only Wednesday but I’ve got to thinking about the weekend already. Having checked out the weather forecast and seen that it’s going to be a shocker…

Saturday

Sunday - that’s snow!!

…I’ve decided to dedicate it to my wii…which then got me thinking about what cool things you could do with a wii for two days. I got the guys at Go Nintendo to help me out. Here’s my list so far:

1) Lose weight - definitely a bonus, think how much extra stuff you could eat
2) Watch tv - no need to move or mess around with wires
3) Play movies - create your own movies of you playing your wii and then play them back to yourself afterwards
4) Stream iTunes - music. TV. Food - perfect weekend already
5) Play air guitar or air drums - practice when streaming iTunes. Will also help with point 1
6) Go bowling - in your own living room! No umbrellas/snow shoes or transport necessary
7) Homebrew - create my own games. Great for when money’s tight
Learn how to cook with Cooking Mama - refer back to point 1 after use
9) Turn my photos into puzzles
10) Talk to other Wii owners - when I get bored of myself

So there we go. Weekend sorted. If you fancy some of that, go get one. There are also loads of accessories and games for maximum fun potential.