If you live in Bristol and are partial to the odd takeaway then listen up – this is the post for you.

Meals.co.uk is a takeaway website with a difference. We’re not talking a list of your local kebab shops here, we’re talking top notch restaurant and takeaway food, delivered to your door. We’re talking all of the quality you get from your favourite local restaurant, but in your pyjamas in front of the TV. That’s the best of both worlds in my eyes.

On the Meals.co.uk website you simply pop in your postcode (they cover only Bristol at the moment) and it comes up with a list of local restaurants. You have a browse of the menus, pick your favourite, and place your order, all in one place. View Post

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Have you ever been in Homesense? I hadn’t until last month. In fact to be honest I had never even heard of it. (I am not very good at shopping).

Basically it’s TK Maxx for your home, but without so much undignified rummaging – brand names but at discounts of up to 60% every day. I must admit that I find TK Maxx a little bit scary and am never sure where to start, so when Homesense invited me to their Bristol store to have a look round and buy myself a little something nice I was a bit nervous.

I needn’t have worried though. Homesense is lovely – everything is very well laid out and displayed, and definitely doesn’t have a bargain store feel about it. What’s nice too is the stock is permanently changing (from day to day, not while you’re actually in the store in some sort of magical Harry Potter way), so you could go back at any time and discover all sorts of new stuff.

This was one of my favourite displays. I do love a nice lantern. View Post

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I am turning into my mother.

It’s true.

I don’t seem to be able to go a single meal nowadays without dropping food on myself. A couple of weeks ago I actually missed my mouth and poured tea straight down my front. It wouldn’t have been so bad if I hadn’t been on a train at the time on my way to London.On my way to London to be filmed for something.

D’oh!

It wasn’t pretty. View Post

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Now that’s a great title for a blog post isn’t it?

When Bee first told me she was gay, about a year ago, one of my very first thoughts (after some initial parental reassurance of course) was ‘Ooh, this would make a great blog post!’ Fortunately I have some shred of sensitivity and didn’t say anything at all until recently when Bee casually said ‘you should blog about that.’

Five magical words that mummy bloggers with older children hardly ever hear.

I’ve been living through a bit of an inner turmoil over the last few years. On the one hand I have been terrified of Bee getting pregnant and carrying on the whole teenage pregnancy cycle that I started 18 years ago, but on the other hand it is really tricky to go crazy with the whole ‘anti-pregnancy’ message when the person you are lobbying is the result of just such a incident.

It’s like saying ‘whatever you do, absolutely don’t let YOU happen to you!’

That would not be cool. View Post

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Calling all bargain hunters! Today I want to tell you all about on of the newest voucher code kids on the block – www.myfavouritevouchercodes.co.uk! Bear with me, it is more exciting than it sounds…

Last weekend was Belle’s 11th birthday. Finding school friends for parties in the middle of the summer holidays is always tricky so this year we went for a bit of a family sleepover (yes I slept on the floor…) with Belle’s favourite food – delivered pizza.*

With delivered pizza I get to score twice – Belle thinks I am super cool and generous, but I get to save money, as we are voucher code fiends. It’s only been in the last few years that I have discovered the joy that is saving money simply by googling something, (thank you to Boyfriend for that – he really was made for a career in procurement), but now there is no going back. Why on earth would you pay full price for something if you could just tappety tap and get money off? It would be madness. View Post

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I had a bit of an embarrassing moment this weekend. I felt kind of silly about it, so thought it was probably something I should share. What is a blog for after all if not for making yourself look silly in front of far more people than is strictly necessary?

It happened on Sunday when I was down in Somerset visiting my family. My sister lives just around the corner from my mum and she asked if I wanted to pop and see what they had done to their kitchen – they have been doing some refurbishments and had knocked down a wall and blocked up a couple of doors.

Sounds harmless enough doesn’t it?

So I got there, and went into the hall. I looked at where the door from the hall into the kitchen had been and saw a blank wall. “What do you think?” my sister asked.

“It looks good!” I said. And burst into tears.

Awkward. View Post

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A few weeks ago I was loaned a Skoda Octavia for a week by Autogas Ltd to test whether or not I could save money with a car that had been converted to run on LPG.

LPG Skoda

In case, like me, you’re not 100% sure what LPG actually is, here’s the science bit:

Liquefied Petroleum Gas is a natural hydrocarbon fuel made up of Propane and Butane. When placed under a small amount of pressure (7bar or 100Psi) it becomes a dense liquid, allowing large quantities of gas to be stored in a relatively small space.

So there you go. Crystal clear now isn’t it? View Post

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I’ve gone a bit competition crazy lately. I never planned to be one of those blogs that is just about freebies, and I promise I’m not going to spam you too often with rubbish competitions for things like sachets of coffee or a free packet of chewing gum every time you tweet a million times for me, it’s just that people keep offering me genuinely nice things to give away.

Sorry about that.

(It’s a tough life for you isn’t it?)

So if the chance to win a Kindle Fire HD isn’t enough for you this week, (greedy so and so), then I also have this funky pair of Hi-Tec walking boots to give away. View Post

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It feels like weeks since I was at Camp Bestival, but despite having been to Spain in between there are still a couple of acts that have stuck in my mind.

The wonderful thing about festivals is that you get to listen to all kinds of new music that you wouldn’t normally see, and this opens you up to all kinds of fun new experiences. One thing I particularly love about live music, and what draws me to the smaller stages to watch less well known acts, is being able to actually get up close and watch the musicians actually playing their instruments – you get to see the passion and concentration in their faces, individual muscles straining.

Anyway, enough of my babbling, here are my two favourite acts from Camp Bestival – my ones to watch. You should definitely check them out: View Post

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easy lemon curd recipe

In lieu of not being in a position to jet off to Iceland right now, I thought I should crack on with one of the more affordable options on my 40 things before I’m 40 list, so this weekend I decided to have a go at an easy lemon curd recipe.

I have always loved lemon curd, but had imagined it to be one of those things that would involve large pans and thermometers and possibly a frilly apron. It turns out though that making lemon curd is really easy! View Post

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Summer is officially here.

Can’t you tell by all the rain we’ve been having?

*sobs*

The kids have only been off school for a few weeks and already you’re three quarters of your way through that emergency bottle of gin, your Pinterest boards full of inspiring outdoor craft activities look like hell on earth and you’re dreaming of getting away from it all, ideally on your own on a desert island with the remainder of the gin. View Post

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As a child I had some unusual interests. Aside from mine and my sister’s favourite game of Estate Agents, I liked designing nets and making boxes, creating colour coded homework schedules and rearranging my bedroom furniture.

The room reorganisations were the most fun.

I don’t want you imagining I took the process lightly though. There would normally be at least a room plan involved, and sometimes even a 3D scale model, including models of the individual items of furniture, so that I could try out a few options first to see how things fitted in different places.

It’s a wonder really I even had that one friend in secondary school. Or that I didn’t go on to have some fabulous architectural career.

The point I wanted to make though is that even if you have a small house, or in my case as a teenager just a bedroom, and can’t afford to move, doesn’t mean you can’t have hours of fun rearranging tiny cardboard pieces of furniture and, ultimately, life-size bits too if you want to really live the dream.

Here are some things you could try… View Post

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