I had a very rock and roll moment last night.

I was overcome by the urge to sort out the kitchen food cupboards, an urge that I’m sure was slightly annoying as my boyfriend was trying to cook a roast dinner at the time. Our kitchen is small and having a girl sat on the floor surrounded by tins of beans and half empty bags of pasta isn’t helpful when you’re trying to check the rise on your Yorkshire puddings.

It was certainly helpful for me though as I discovered that while I had been frantically buying those fruit yo-yo bear things on my Ocado app in a bid to get Belle to eat fruit in some form, I had actually been stockpiling them at the back of the cupboard. I transferred them to an old biscuit tin and discovered I had enough to feed a family of four for roughly eight days.

With my iPad in hand, sat on the lino, I did a spot of food shopping and menu planning and reckon I will have saved a considerable amount of cash, just by taking half an hour to actually think about meals rather than just panic buying various meats.

It got me thinking about other potential ways that I could save money, so here are a few of my thoughts to inspire you:

Reduce, reuse and recycle

As much as I don’t want to be the kind of person who leaps on you the minute you unwrap a present so that they can fold and save the paper, there is a lot to be said for being a bit more thoughtful when it comes to waste. Things like wrapping paper and padded envelopes are stupidly expensive and given the number of padded envelopes that come through the letterbox, I really can’t justify ever having to buy one.

Get the best deal

I’m pretty good at comparing insurance deals and energy suppliers – Belle has at least four Meerkats – but I’m a little ashamed to say that I have never tried sites where you can save money on your monthly bills phone, TV and broadband bills. Silly isn’t it? It’s just not something I’ve ever thought to do, mainly because I’m terrified that it might mean not being connecting to the internet for a period. This is less for me and more for Belle – how would she monitor her Dance Moms Instagram account effectively?? It’s definitely something to think about though. View Post

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“You’ve definitely lost weight,” says my boyfriend, very sweetly.

“I don’t think I have,” I say, in a way that he would call stubborn and I would call realistic, “you’re just saying that to be nice.”

He looks exasperated with me.

“You definitely have. You look amazing in that dress.”

I try to be quiet because although I’m not entirely convinced I do, I love to be told it and don’t want him to stop saying nice things.

Although I don’t actually own a pair of scales, it may well be true, as January was my ‘get super fit and slim and gorgeous‘ month, aided by the Garmin Vivofit from Halfords. Throughout the month Halfords were challenging people, with their #31fitterdays campaign, to increase their levels of activity with the help of a simple exercise plan. The Vivofit is an invaluable tool as part of any bid to get in shape as it helps you keep track of exactly how lazy you have been.

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Breaking up is hard to do, so the song says, and it’s especially hard when there are children involved. Everyone tells you that you shouldn’t stay in a relationship for the sake of the kids, but how do you make sure you manage the break up so that they suffer as little distress as possible?

One plus one is a fantastic resource for parents going through a separation, helping you both to think about how you communicate with each other in a way that always ensures the kids come first.

I’ve been checking out their parent planning tools, so if you’d like to find out more please check out my post on their blog here.

#putkidsfirst

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Looking for cool things to do in New York?

Forget Times Square and the Empire State Building.

Central Park? Sure, it has trees, but who cares? OK, lots of people, but come on, it’s just a park. We’ve all been to a park. Also I visited New York in January and New York in the winter is COLD.

Have you ever taken a ride on a wooden escalator though?

No, I didn’t think so.

When the flagship Macy’s store moved to 34th Street in 1902 is was the very height of innovation and sophistication and its wooden escalators were no exception. Today you can still find several sets of the escalators in the middle of the store, so after checking in at my hotel and giving everyone I saw two dollars just in case, because I don’t understand how to tip, I headed to Macy’s – one more big tick on my 40 things before 40 list.

A few kids have apparently had fingers severed in the steps but that is surely a small price to pay for the preservation of heritage?

Macy's wooden escalatorOne peril of travelling alone is that most of your holiday snaps are massive close ups of your own face, with something interesting just about visible in the background. Like this one: View Post

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pasta bake recipeI love looking at recipe books, the pictures are always amazing aren’t they? You get all excited and think ‘I could do that’ and then you look at the recipe and realise it contains 17 different ingredients, three of which you’ve never even heard of, and you get a pizza out of the freezer instead.

Or you attempt it, (leaving out the things you’re not sure about), and end up with something like ‘blue soup’, Bridget Jones style. The ‘purple pie’ I tried to make with leftover red cabbage is fast on it’s way to becoming a favourite family legend, and not for good reasons.

I need something simple and idiot proof, a recipe with just a few ingredients, none of which I have to go to a specialist Asian supermarket for, which makes me perfect for the #TryTotal challenge from Total, the Greek yoghurt people. The idea is to create easy but tasty recipes with just a few ingredients and for your efforts you can win all sorts of lovely prizes including a Magimix food mixer, an iPhone6, a cookbook or a month’s supply of Greek yoghurt. View Post

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Weather permitting, tomorrow I am flying out to New York to interview some of the cast of the new SpongeBob movie: A Sponge Out of Water.

*acts nonchalant*

Who am I kidding? I am about as chalant as it gets. (Why is chalant not a word? You feel like it should be.)

Firstly, there is the snow. I’m not good in snow. I will fall over and it will be embarrassing.

Second, NEW YORK BABY!! I have only been to America once and that was to go to Arkansas. Even the guards at airport security looked at me funny and asked me why I was bothering.

And finally – the thing I am most chalant about – I have to conduct video interviews with celebrities. When they asked whether I wanted to do written or video interviews I figured ‘in for a penny’ and all that, and so said video before I had chance to think about it. I figured it would look far more impressive and then you would know that I had actually been there and not just sent an interview by email. View Post

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What is your favourite comfort food?

When I’m feeling in need of a little calorie based comfort I regress to toddlerhood and find myself drawn to all the beige foods – mashed potato, thick white toast with lashings of butter, pasta and cheesy sauces – you know what I’m talking about. Small children really know what they are doing there.

Another of my favourites is cauliflower cheese, which has the added bonus of not being all about the carbs. I’ve put together a very simple recipe that proves that a lack of colour doesn’t have to mean a lack of taste and nutrition – it’s all the fun of wintery stodge but without the guilt.

smoked haddock and cauliflower cheese recipe View Post

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No, I’m not going to go under the stairs as me and come out as Barbara Streisand, this is a post all about my attempt to be one of those bloggers who always has a beautiful collection of vintage objects effortlessly yet stylishly arranged on their mantelpiece. Except I don’t have a mantelpiece and I’m not very stylish, so it’s basically some pictures of me showing you my under stairs area* before and after I move my massive printer and hide it in Bee’s room.

I know right?? It’s going to be awesome. Hold onto you hats.

So basically I have these lovely spiral stairs, which look very pretty indeed when the light is right and you apply a good Instagram filter. See?

under stairs makeover

Nice right? Except my house is pretty small and there isn’t really anywhere to put stuff, so if you look closely you will see that under the stairs I have two printers and a nasty black IKEA table. Grim.  View Post

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I have an alarm clock that wakes me up to the radio every morning. A while back I switched from being woken up by Radio 4 to letting the sounds of BBC Somerset drift into by subconscious instead. Listening to Radio 4 made me feel a little bit more important, but it made me miserable because everything in the news is so fucking sad.*

Seriously, pick up any newspaper or turn the TV on at 6pm (to something other than Eggheads) and you’d be forgiven for wondering why we don’t just set a massive nuclear explosion off in the centre of the earth and put us all out of our misery.

Take a look at the news today and you can see what I mean:

negative news

It’s shit. I mean well done to Brian Blessed and everything, but come on. View Post

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I have two words for you today my friends…

wardrobe maintenance

I shall just give you a moment to absorb them.

*kicks back with a jaffa cake*

I know what you’re thinking now, you’re thinking ‘Hang on there a cotton pickin’ minute, wardrobe maintenance? What are we talking here? Am I going to need a dipstick?’

No, you do not. We’re going under the metaphorical bonnet, but there are no fluids involved, not at this stage in our relationship at least. I’m talking about organising your wardrobe to keep your clothes looking nice, save you time in the morning and generally make you feel like the kind of grown up who always knows where their shoes are. This is not only good for your clothes but makes you feel good about yourself too. Check out this article from Betta Living for more about why a good wardrobe mainentance routine is important.

First off though, before I share my wardrobe words of wisdom, I’m going to give you a peek into mine:

wardrobe organisation

My wardrobe is a work in progress organisationally, so there is plenty to learn from it: View Post

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Last week I wrote about the Love Log.

If you haven’t read the post, you really should. It really is very funny and I’m not just saying that because I wrote it and want you to read it.*

In it I lay into the world of PR rather, and complain heartily about the number of shit press releases I receive every day. I had an email today though that I wanted to tell you about because it was absolutely the perfect antidote to my ranting and made me smile.

The email was from a PR person who had read my post about the log of love and who clearly didn’t want to piss me off. The release itself was pretty standard – certainly informative and clear if not a little irrelevant geographically – but I would probably not even have opened it if it hadn’t been for the title:

“Press release – hopefully not too shit”

Nice.

And just for that, I’m going to be a good blogger and tell you that if you work in Manchester, you should definitely sign up for the Manchester v Melanoma Challenge 2015 being run by Melanoma UK and raise money to fight skin cancer.

Manchester melanoma challenge

*I so am.

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Yes, sorry, I’m going to talk about periods. All the boys are allowed to switch over to a different blog – something about football or Game of Thrones or sandwiches or whatever it is men are into nowadays.

Everyone left happy to continue?

Excellent.

First off then, why is it that we are still so squeamish about talking about periods? I’m not shy when it comes to talking about my elusive cervix, and yet I’m pretty sure I’m in the minority, online at least. I think it might actually be one of those subjects you are more likely to talk to your face to face friends about, which is a rarity for a lot of bloggers.

Is it because it’s a ‘woman’s issue’ do you think? Or is it just one of those things we’d rather pretend doesn’t happen? There was a lot of sniggering in the parent blogger world recently when a well known brand of women’s incontinence pants tried to get a group together for an event – no one seemed to want to admit that it was something that effected them. Sure, I may not be in incontinence pants (yet), but let’s face it, I have pushed two human heads out through my vagina – I don’t go on a trampoline without making sure I go to the toilet first.

Not sexy maybe, but a reality of life as a mother.

Another of the joys of parenting is guiding your children through the difficult teenage years and if you’re lucky enough to be the parent of daughters, this essentially means one thing – periods.

Oh the joy! Hormones coursing through their bloodstream, turning your normally sweet-hearted darling into a snarling beast of a girl. It’s fun isn’t it? View Post

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