This week I hired a carpet cleaner and cleaned all of my carpets.

That sounds like a bigger project than it actually is – my house is pretty tiny and only has four fairly small carpeted rooms – but it still took me about four hours of furniture shifting and emptying bucket after bucket of filthy water into the bath. It is Christmas after all, the time to really treat yourself.

I felt pretty good about it, never having cleaned a carpet in my life before, and my bedroom carpet in particular came up really nicely; the beer stain is completely gone now. (Don’t ask.) I even think it counts as exercise.

Now my carpets are your bog standard plain colours, nothing fancy here, so I was intrigued when UK Flooring Direct got in touch with me to ask me to take at look at what they think could be the flooring of the future – printed floor designs.

Dum dum dum dum!! View Post

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This post identifies one of the key drawbacks to having a blog – the fact that rather than just saying things to friends after a few glasses of wine and then forgetting about them, you write them down for the world to see and hence become accountable.

Take New Year’s resolutions for example.

At the beginning of 2014 I came up with two New Year’s resolutions; to grow myself professionally and to eat more dip. Not in that order. (Click on the link to find out more about my dip ambitions.)

hummus

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2014 has been a funny one, and not in an especially haha sort of way. It has been a bit of a year of change – saying goodbye to old relationships, moving away from Bristol, new homes, new schools, new boyfriends; all good fun.

At the end of the year then I thought I’d pick out some of my favourite posts from each month so that you can catch up on everything that’s gone on. If you like the format then let me know; I can do the same again next year and then you won’t need to read anything in between.

2014 slummy single mummy

I seemed to be pretty angry in January. I chased a bin man who didn’t collect my Christmas tree, fumed over the Overuse Of Capital Letters and got cross when the Co-op wouldn’t let me buy some out of date potatoes. I also made up my own infographic about fussy eating, which I thought was pretty cool, and had a bit of a crisis of confidence about whether I was funny enough. View Post

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This is a review from my 12 year old daughter Belle. All words and pictures are her own. 

Makie Doll

Recently my mum asked me if I wanted to design my own doll and then write mine own review it, obviously any girl would not turn up the opportunity to create and customise their own doll! So this is my review of my Makie Doll!

I spent along time deciding if I wanted to base it on a person or just make it up. In the end I decided to just make it up as I went along!

The first stage of completing your Makie Doll is to choose the skin colour. Next you choose the clothes and then the hair style. There is a button in the bottom corner to make the face more detailed so I used this to change the shape of the ears and eyebrows, etc. View Post

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There’s nothing I like more than a hamper of delicious goodies and this week I had one delivered right to the door (my best kind) by Asda. They wanted to show off their Christmas meat collection and I was certainly impressed. It didn’t hurt that the meat came in a rather gorgeous wicker basket, surrounded by mince pies and wine. (Again, my best kind.)

Asda Christmas meat

Asda meatI wouldn’t normally think to choose Asda for my festive meats, so I was really pleasantly surprised to see just how fancy and festive they were. Our basket included:

Extra Special 21 Day Bone-In Horseradish Beef, Extra Special Venison Rack and Extra Special Six Bird Roast.

(Are you sensing the theme here?) View Post

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Today I have a Slow Watch review from my boyfriend. If you like this, check out his attempts at a juice detox.

Slow watch review

Somewhere on the internet, there must be some stats about how the global sales of watches have sunk since the mobile phone market has monopolised everything we do.  I don’t think I had worn a watch for about ten years, having always relied on my smart phone for the time of day. 

At the best of times, I can be described as a phone addict – I’m constantly checking my phone and if I was totally honest with myself, most of the time I don’t know quite what I’m checking it for.  In meetings,* there is nothing more blatant and rude than someone with their phone on the table, constantly pressing the home key to find out what time it is, or to check if something far more interesting has happened in their virtual life outside the room. View Post

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A guest post from my lovely boyfriend.

Cornerstone razor

Ask any man and they’ll tell you the same thing; as a kid, you see starting to shave as a massive leap forward into the world as an adult man. You watch your Dad shaving for years and long for the day when you can start pulling faces in the mirror whilst covered in shaving foam. I was always puzzled why my Dad used to tell me that I should enjoy the pre-shaving days, as the process was a total faff which would soon become a daily burden. I assumed he was talking total rubbish, but after a couple of years of shaving rash, nicks and cuts, I realised that shaving really is a pain.
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I’ve always had a sweet tooth. Whilst my sister will happily munch away on bag after bag of cheese and onion crisps and bits of toast and marmite, I’m happier with a packet of hobnobs or a bar of fruit and nut.

I was the same as a child. I’m not good at remembering key events from my childhood, but one thing that does stand out for me is the garage that me and my Dad used to stop at on the way home from school when I was about seven years old. They had that classic 1980s pick and mix set up, where you helped yourself to a tiny paper bag and chose your sweets to make your own 10p mix up; foamy bananas, black jacks, fruit salads – you know the drill.

In my mind of course it all looks totally natural, as though I was stepping into the garage in 2014, but I’m sure it wouldn’t look like that really. I’d love to go back 30 years and see it again.

In fact, I found a little video montage of 1970s and 80s sweets in case you want to swoon over the retro packaging and see how many of your childhood favourites you can spot:

*sighs heavily for the days when you could buy a packet of Opal Fruits for 3p*

In this spirit of reminiscence, (it is nearly Christmas after all), I spent a happy hour or so ‘at work’ this morning browsing the retro sweets section on the Keep it Sweet website. Keep it Sweet do all manner of sugary deliciousness, including party bags and sweets for weddings and corporate events, but the retro sweet section was really where it was at for me.

Here are some of my favourites: View Post

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We had dinner last night with my auntie and cousin. They are going to be hosting Christmas for the first time this year and last night’s roast chicken was a bit of a trial run; we tested out the elbow room on the dining table, ate some pigs in blankets and talked about the schedule for the day.

It got me thinking about the Christmas traditions that we have created for ourselves as a family over the years and made me wonder how many of them are shared by other people.

Here are 12 of my Christmas rules, but what are yours?

12 rules of Christmas

1. At some point in the week before Christmas we have a festive trip to Marks & Spencer, where I let the children put (pretty much) whatever they want in the trolley. (No spirits for Belle.) We spend at least £100, and come away with absolutely nothing that can be turned into a meal. It’s all about the cheese savouries and mini ovenable treats. View Post

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I’ve been spending a lot of time over the last few weeks browsing the internet for lovely things. I could pretend it has all been in the name of Christmas shopping but we all know that would be a lie. I just like doing anything other than working.

Here are four of my favourite things this month:

favourite things

A) This is a quote from A Midsummer Night’s Dream that makes me think of Belle, who is very little but very fierce. It comes from Bookishly, a fab company making literary inspired gifts. I love the style of these and would happily cover my walls with them. Get 20% off orders at Bookishly with the code SSMUMMY20.

B) This green tea shampoo is from a company called O’Right, and markets itself as the world’s first carbon neutral shampoo. The idea behind the brand is to create green products without compromising on quality, and they have definitely achieved that. Not only is the shampoo itself fantastic and eco-friendly, but if you plant the (beautiful) bottle it will grow into a tree. I’m not even kidding, an actual tree. How cool is that??

C) You know you should eat more fruit, but really you’d rather have a bag of crisps right? Well, I may have the answer here to all of your prayers. Emily Fruit Crisps are made just with real fruit and a little oil. They are DELICIOUS. I had a packet of the pineapple this morning and they were wonderfully crispy and full of flavour. The packaging is just gorgeous too. I’m looking forward to these becoming available in a supermarket near me.

D) Stack Magazines is a genius idea from a guy called Steven Watson, a magazine subscription with a difference. Every month Stack will send you a different independent magazine; you won’t know what it’s going to be but you will know that it will be interesting, inspiring and something a little bit unusual. Who doesn’t like surprises?

Disclosure: I was sent some shampoo and some fruit crisps to try out.

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Do you ever get that feeling where you have loads of things that you want to say, but you physically don’t know how to get the words out?

I had this one night this week. I was lying in bed worrying about something. In my head I had a full on monologue going on, I was ranting and raving in what felt like quite a reasonable and coherent way and yet when I tried to say out loud how I was feeling I just couldn’t – I couldn’t make my mouth open. It felt like there must be a loose connection somewhere between my brain and my tongue, a wiring malfunction.

“Brain to mouth, are you receiving me?”

Radio silence. Quite literally.

oversharing View Post

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I’ve been living in Taunton for nearly six months now (six months!) and although I’ve been pretty good at things like getting all of my post redirected and ensuring Belle goes to school most of the time, there is one thing I have been putting off – finding a new dentist.

Unfortunately this isn’t because I have super strong, brilliantly white teeth that need no care and attention at all – anything but – it’s because a) I am a teeny weeny bit scared of dentists and b) I have no idea how to do it.

Find a dentist

Definitely not me

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