How often do you shower? I had a boring old press release fall in my inbox the other day about showers.

*yawn*

It was 95% dull, but there was one fact that did stick out – apparently the average person in the UK has five showers and three baths per week.

I had to re-read that just to make sure.

It’s not five showers or three baths, it’s five showers and three baths. That’s more than one wash of some sort every day. That means there’s at least one day during the week where this average person thinks to themselves, ‘you know what, I had a bath this morning, but I’m going to have a shower too!’

How often do you shower? Do you fit in three baths a week?

I reckon I average four showers and zero baths. Apart from quite possibly making me a bit rank, it also must mean that somewhere there is a person having six showers and six baths a week, to balance out me, which seems excessive to say the least.

The truth is that I really am not a fan of washing. I hated it as a child and my parents are very fond of reminding me that my Dad used to have to carry me upstairs over his shoulder to the bath while I screamed ‘don’t make me do it!!’

I thought I’d grow out of it, but I haven’t. I do it obviously, because I have to, but I don’t enjoy it. I don’t ever think ‘Oooh, lovely, I’m going to have an amazing long shower, that’ll be nice.’  View Post

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I was 12 years old when I started my periods and I remember vividly the embarrassment of buying sanitary towels from the only place within walking distance – one of of those corner shop type places that sold random brands of crisps you’d never heard of out of cardboard boxes and ‘Happy Shopper’ washing up liquid.

Suffice to say I was NOT a happy shopper.

It was the very early 90s, and I’m not sure that sanitary products were quite as advanced as they are now. My cornershop definitely didn’t stock anything with a silky soft finish, or wings, or a lockaway core. They sold pads in packs of ten that were roughly the size and shape of a rolled up tea towel. The insides were basically cotton wool, so they immediately clumped in a very uncomfortable and inefficient fashion.

There was no rollerblading going on when you had one of those beasts wedged in your pants, that’s for sure.

Wearing them to school was horrendous, and there was always the worry that your period would start when you weren’t expecting it, that you’d end up with blood on your clothes, or worst still, that someone would be able to SMELL you. Was that a thing when you were in school?? I felt kind of RIPE when I had my period, like everyone would be able to smell the metal tang of blood in the air as I walked through the corridors.

Things have come a long way of course, but that embarrassment, that period shame, still lingers.

According to recent research in fact, 71% of girls in the UK have felt embarrassed buying sanitary products, and a further 67% would feel embarrassed if they found period blood on their clothes.

That’s not cool is it? Do you feel shame or embarrassment attached to your period? Do you know ho the young women in your life feel about theirs? It’s not okay that periods are viewed like this.

It’s LIFE. It’s what happens. WE ALL BLEED. Get over it.

This International Day of the Girl, Plan International UK wants to tackle the stigma and bring the issue to centre stage with Plaster Pads: miniature sanitary pads that are worn like plasters for all the world to see.

plaster pads blood is blood campaign View Post

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small garden bench gardenbenches.com review best garden bench

Okay, so I’m probably pushing it a little bit with that title, but I DID ask a question about my new garden bench on Facebook a couple of weeks ago, and quite a few people answered, so that sort of counts as a debate I think. Also, you want the best garden bench for your garden and you want to know where to put it, so I know you’re interested.

My dilemma was this: a lovely company called Garden Benches was, as the name suggests, sending me a new garden bench.* However, my back garden currently resembles a prison yard. It’s literally just a square of fenced in gravel. There is even some spray paint on the fence panels where I sprayed my bed pink, which adds to the ‘abandoned railway embankment’ vibe. I didn’t especially want to sit out there.

My front garden however, is much tidier. (Not a euphemism.) Our house is off the road a little bit, so I look out onto a nice little patch of grass and people often walk past with dogs. I’ve even planted out Belle’s apple tree. You remember the one we accidentally grew from a pip when she was tiny? We’ve dragged it round with us in this battered old pot, praying that one day we’d have a house of our own to plant it in, and now, thank God, it has a home.

I have some plants in pots too. Generally the front garden is a much friendlier place to be and makes you feel less like you are part way through a three year sentence for actual bodily harm. View Post

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Today I have a very interesting post from Bee about a course she’s doing with Kritikme to write a novel in three months. Please have a read! 

As some of you may know, I graduated from Creative Writing at London South Bank University a couple of academic years ago now, and what I got out of it was a first class degree, a complete, ready for publication collection of poetry that I’m never going to do anything with, and the feeling that I was just kind of done with writing.

I took a break and quit my freelance writing career to work full time in a café and clear my head of all these negative feelings I had about writing after my course was over. Now I’ve decided that, of course, writing is my passion and my little special gift I’ve been given by God or my mother or whoever, and I know that that’s what I want to do with my life.

I decided recently to pick up creative writing again and try and get a novel finished, along with the help of Louise Dean who runs Kritikme, an online service for serious writers which also offers an amazing plan where you can write the first draft of a novel in 90 days! I’ve written a little bit about it over on my own blog, but I just wanted to share with you 10 things that I feel I’ve gotten out of this plan that I didn’t get out of my three-year degree course. I was just a teen back then, and I didn’t take advantage of the opportunities offered to me as much as I should have, but this plan has given me a second chance to really get into writing fiction.

online novel writing course Kritikme review View Post

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Produced in association with Ecover

Environmentally friendly cleaning products have come a long way.

A long time ago, it felt like there was a formula you could apply to green home care, that went something like this:

G + P = C

Where G is green credentials, P is price and C is a complete inability to get anything clean.

It’s not like that any more though. Green cleaning doesn’t have to mean that you compromise on standards OR take out a bank loan for the privilege. Nowadays you’re not even really a proper middle class mum without a bottle of Ecover washing up liquid by the sink. For me, Ecover is THE green cleaning brand. They’ve been around since 1979 – almost as long as me – so it’s no wonder they’ve built up such a great reputation in that time for innovation and efficiency.

I got to find out a bit more about Ecover, and in particular their new laundry liquid range and fragrances, when I went along recently to an event they were holding in London. I definitely did NOT just go on the promise of gin cocktails – that was just a welcome bonus. Honest. (They were so good.)

Ecover laundry liquid

Because laundry liquid on its own isn’t exactly the most riveting of topics, Ecover laid on a couple of extra laundry related activities. First up, we had one minute to sort coloured washing from whites and load a machine…

ONLY KIDDING!

That would be a rubbish way to spend an evening.

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Looking for a BookBeat discount code? Read on for a one month free BookBeat trial offer! 

Bookbeat discount code audiobook review

When I was small I had a cassette tape of Winnie the Pooh stories. I listened to them so often that I could tell them back to you now word for word, remembering exactly all the nuances of the narrator. (Who, it turns out after some research, was a chap called Norman Shelley.)

It was wonderful. Perfect in every way. I would lie in bed in the dark and I could SEE the stories in my mind. (It took me quite a long time though to understand that Pooh and Piglet weren’t following a woozle around that tree.)

What I’m trying to say is that listening to someone else tell you a story rather than reading a book can be a wonderful thing.

It can be a convenient thing too, as you can listen to books at the same time as doing other things, like exercising, travelling or just lying about on the sofa. I love listening to audiobooks while I’m driving – I fall into this (very safe) trance like state and I’m IN the story.

(At the same time as paying careful attention to the road.)

Unlimited listening with BookBeat

This week I’ve been trying out BookBeat.

BookBeat is amazing audiobook app, with thousands of classic and new fiction and non-fiction. The great things about BookBeat, which gives it the edge over some other audiobook offerings, is that once you’ve paid your monthly fee – which is only £12.90 – you can listen to unlimited books.

Yup, you heard me.

UNLIMITED books.

As many books as you like, every single month, with no restrictions, including a ONE MONTH FREE trial. You can download them and listen offline too, and there is no contract. You can cancel at any time.

It’s basically Netflix for books, and who doesn’t like a bit of Netflix? View Post

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Homesense is my happy place.

I know it should probably be a cliff top, where I can contemplate life and the vastness of the universe as I stare at the horizon, but it’s not. It’s Homesense. Specifically the plant pot section or a display of particularly fluffy cushions, ideally in the middle of the day on a Tuesday, when no one else is there. Homesense is part of the TK Maxx family, so there is always treasure to be found at discount prices, with up to 60% off the RRP.

(I did a quick count around the house and I already have 14 plant pots from Homesense.)

Homesense finds

It’s not that I’m especially materialistic, because I don’t have to buy anything for the magic to work, I just like wandering around and seeing what treasures I can find. I love stroking the sheepskin rugs and looking right to the back of the kitchen shelves to see what goodies other people might have found before me and hidden for later. View Post

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If you read my recent post about my new wardrobes, you’ll remember that I promised to show you a bit more of my autumn bedroom makeover.

So this is that.

Because I had to empty the entire room for the wardrobes to be fitted, I wanted to use it as an opportunity to think really carefully about what I wanted to put back in again. All of my clothes and shoes are in the wardrobes now, so really what else do you need? The bathroom is just next door, so that’s where all my toiletries are, and I don’t have piles of make-up or hair products or anything like that. The rest of the house is quite colourful and full of books and plants, (remember my shelves?), so I wanted to keep things REALLY simple for the bedroom makeover.

With the night drawing in, I wanted to add a little bit of autumnal warmth too, with some warm copper colours and pinks. (Autumn doesn’t have to be all brown and dark you know.)

Also, I wanted to add a kitten or two, because I did warn you that I’d be trying to casually drop them into posts wherever I could.

Wayfair bedroom makeover

So the first thing I did was to spray my bed pink. It was white before, and very scruffy looking, so while it was in pieces from the wardrobe fitting, I took it outside and sprayed it with some pink Plastikote. Easy peasy. For a little while that was all I had – a pink bed. It was quite liberating. I felt like I was cleansing my soul.

Belle said it looked like a poorly furnished hotel.

And then Wayfair got in touch to see if I wanted to do a little bedroom makeover showcasing some of their lovely things and it ALL FELL TOGETHER.

Hooray!

I think that warrants another kitten shot. View Post

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As I type this I am sat on my bed. Next to me is a pile of magazines. A pretty big pile to be honest as I seem to have accidentally collected a backlog.

I have Woman, Glamour, Ms, Lonely Planet Traveller and Gardens Illustrated. I have already done the ‘tricky crossword’ in Woman, (not that tricky), but the rest are untouched, if possibly a little out of date. (I did say I had a backlog.)

Sitting on the bed with them makes me happy. Even better, the fact of them making me happy makes me even more happy. That probably sounds a bit of an odd thing to say but I feel a bit like recently I have forgotten about some of the simple things that have always given me pleasure. View Post

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I have never been very good at keeping my clothes tidy. As a teenager my bedroom was so obscenely messy that I once trod on my guitar and didn’t realise until a few days later.

Not any more.

No more puddles of clothes on the floor or stacks of washing needing a home. Oh no. Because I have THE WARDROBES OF DREAMS. (Otherwise known as my new built-in wardrobes from Sharps.)

I admit that I was nervous during the planning process. (Read about that bit here.) I’ve never had proper built in wardrobes before and I was worried that they might look a bit, I don’t know, tacky maybe? I’m not even sure that’s the right word, but hopefully you know what I mean. I think it was just that built in wardrobes felt like such a grown up thing to have – how could they be cool at the same time??

But OH MY GOODNESS they are SO cool. (Or my definition of cool at least.)

Here’s the space pre-fitting:

Sharps built in wardrobes review

You have to empty the room and take the carpets up before your fitter arrives. They don’t fit wardrobes on top of the carpet because they need a firm, sturdy surface. The space like this looks pretty small, but here it is with the wardrobes: View Post

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We’ve been in our new house for about seven weeks now. It feels like WAY longer, which I’m taking as a good sign because that must mean it feels like home right?

One of the things that I’ve been meaning to do since we moved in is to put up a picture on the plain white chimney breast wall in our living room. We had a family photo shoot done before we moved with Life is Crawsome, so I had been thinking that one of those photos would be nice. But then I was a bit nervous about having a giant ME smiling down while I watched TV, so I decided a mirror might be a better option.

It was brilliant timing actually, as Exclusive Mirrors had been a touch previously asking if I fancied taking a look at one of their mirrors, so I said ‘yes please thank you very much’ and picked the Claremont round gold mirror.

‘This Claremont round gold mirror is oh so stylish with its uniquely designed frame,’ the website told me. ‘The stunning mirror is finished in a luxurious gold and comes complete with wow factor frame. Perfectly suited to either a contemporary or traditional setting the mirror is extremely versatile.  Customers have the option with this Claremont round gold mirror to feature it either on its own or alongside other stylish furniture and accessories to create a fabulous appearance.’

Luckily the quality of the mirror is not reflected by the quality of the description writing.

(See what I did there? REFLECTED? I’m so good at this.)

Here it is, with me in it obviously:

review mirror exclusive mirrors

Isn’t it beautiful?

It’s just over a metre in diameter and so fills the chimney breast perfectly. I loved the fact that it looked like a huge flower. I painted the wall this lovely turquoise colour especially to really make it stand out and I love how the colour comes through each of the petals. View Post

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I’ve lived in Taunton on and off now for nearly twenty years and in that time there have been certain shops that have probably always been there, but which have passed under my radar.

And then you buy a house and suddenly you start noticing things and thinking about things that you’ve never thought about before, like boiler insurance and bespoke shelving and built in wardrobes.

We have a Sharps showroom in our town centre, but all this time I honestly thought it was just one bed and a wardrobe, just casually in a shop window. Oh and sometimes balloons advertising special offers.

Sharps fitted wardrobes review

When we knew we were buying this house, and that we were going to go from having big built in bedrooms cupboards to NOTHING, I decided to pop in to the Sharps showroom with Belle and my MIND WAS BLOWN. Turns out it isn’t just a bed and a wardrobe. That place goes back for MILES. Okay, maybe not literally miles, but a long way. I smelt a nice juicy blog project…

Let’s back it up a bit first though.

Let me set the scene in our bedroom so you can see what we have to play with.

It’s not a massive room – roughly 4m x 3m – but part of that is a fairly deep alcove, approximately 2 metres wide. I was VERY proud of myself remembering to take a photo of the empty space before we moved in: View Post

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