escapist books

Which, let’s face it, is a lot of the time.

These eight books aren’t self-help books or anything like that, they are just really lovely books, with amazing illustrations and photographs, or unusual stories. They are books that you can escape into, even if it’s just for ten minutes and you still have to clean the bathroom when you come out again.

I’ve chosen each of these because I think they are the perfect books to dip into when you need a bit of cheering up. With this in mind, I’ve taken a picture of a page inside each, to give you an idea of what you might find. Each title is a clickable link though, in case you want to find out more or see the front cover.

(Although you know you should never judge a book by its cover right?) View Post

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Is your life sorted

Is your life sorted?

More to the point, what does it even mean to have your life sorted? According to research from Compare Cover, most people don’t feel like they have their life sorted until the age of 37. Well, I’m 38, so I should be all good by now shouldn’t I?

I suspect that I’m not your typical 38 year old though when it comes to life plans.

According to the Compare Cover research, a lot of people, when they think about having their life sorted, think about things like getting married and having a family. For the majority of people I imagine that these events normally come after stuff like building a satisfying career, feeling financially secure, finishing their A-levels… I’ve done life a bit backwards though, and it’s only now that my youngest child is on the brink of leaving home – (four years feels like a relative brink…) – that I’m almost in the position to do things like buy a house.

Whoops.

Compare Cover’s research, which included opinions from 2,000 people, found that top of the list in terms of feeling like your life is sorted, is having your finances in order. 78% of women picked this as their number one.  View Post

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How good is the 90p Primark lipstick

I walked past Primark on my way to work this morning. In the window was a big poster, telling me about the Primark must have 90p lipstick. I didn’t have to be at work until 10.56am (I had one of those stupid ‘your parcel will arrive between 10.56am and 11.56am’ things), so I thought I’d do a bit of research on your behalf.

Primark 90p lipstick review

What I wanted to know is, how good really is a 90p lipstick from Primark?

First up, I should say that I am the least well qualified person in the world to write this post. I hardly ever wear make-up, and never wear lipstick. I did once buy a dark purple Mac lipstick, but when I put it on fiancé nearly cried. Belle said I looked sassy, but I think in reality it just drew attention to my teeth. View Post

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make home lighter

When you rent your house there’s a limited number of things you can do to brighten up your home. You can’t knock any walls down, or make windows bigger or put in big glass doors or anything – you’re kind of stuck with what you’ve got when it comes to the basics.

If you’re lucky, you might have a landlady who lets you do a spot of painting. The last time I was allowed to paint walls though I got a bit carried away, and painted my kitchen in these colours, on opposite walls:

brighten up your home

Nice right?

Okay, so perhaps it’s an acquired taste.

So other than painting the walls in colours that make guests feel a bit sick, what can you do to brighten up your home? I’ve got some tips: View Post

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This post about my new DFS sofa contains three of my favourite things:

  • Winter
  • Cosiness
  • Sitting down

I’m not going to be one of those people, and call it Hygge just because I put a blanket over my knees, (I ranted about this), but I will say that I do like a cosy winter’s evening at home on the sofa.

What’s not to love really? Christmas is all done, spring is on its way, and in the meantime you have an excuse to put your pyjamas on at 4pm every day. Snuggle up with a cocoa, light some candles and crack out the Fresh Prince back catalogue. (Sooo excited that this is now on Comedy Central.)

My snuggling has been severely impaired until now by the fact that our biggest sofa was also the least cosy sofa in the whole world. It had no arms, no squishiness – what on earth is the point of a sofa with no arms? You may as well just sit on the floor and lean against the wall. That’s not very cosy is it? That’s like being 13 and on a school camp in an old mansion house and hanging out on the floor in the corridor because you think you’re cool.

No more corridor floor chic for me though.

I’ve got a new sofa from DFS – the Zinc 2 seater sofa, designed by French Connection. You see how comfy yet stylish I look?

DFS Zinc sofa review View Post

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When I was about 14 I spent a lot of time lying on my bed, (which for a while was a mattress on the floor because I was bohemian like that and too cool for a bed), staring at my face in a mirror. Already at that age I realised that lying on your back was a flattering angle – a bit like a facelift, only less painful. It’s the same with legs – they look better when you lie down and stick them in the air because the fat falls backwards and doesn’t hang over your knees.

I’m 40 next year and I must admit that the prospect of examining my face close up in a mirror feels somewhat less appealing now. I’m not going to say ‘Oh my God, I look so old!’ or anything annoying like that because I think we both know that I don’t particularly, but just over the last year I have started to notice changes. My hair has started to dry out, my tummy is round even when I’m lying on my back, the fat around my elbows is squishier and the skin on my face is definitely looser.

I notice it most around my jawline. I’ve always had a decent jawline, but over the last 12 months it has noticeably softened and I’ve started to get a little pouchy bit under my chin. I can feel the softness under my jaw and up to my ears – I feel like I can pull my skin up behind my ears a little bit and get a squishy area around my earlobes that wasn’t there before. My skin tone isn’t as even as it once was either.

This is me, under harsh light, no editing. So basically how I look every day.

(Try not to look at the eyebrows.)

Boots No7 lift and luminate range

Boots No7 lift and luminate range

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Looking for Innovo reviews? Want easy ways to strengthen your pelvic floor? You’ve come to the right place!

I have a gadget to show you today!

You know how lots of blogs show off fancy things like iPads and remote control helicopters? Well, it’s sort of like that. Only not.

Today I want to introduce you to Innovo. You might remember Innovo from when I talked about it here a couple of months ago? Innovo is a totally non-invasive way to strengthen your pelvic floor muscles and treat cause of urinary leaks, rather than just covering them up. Stress incontinence is something that a lot of people are too embarrassed to talk about, but it’s definitely not something you should just have to accept.

This post is the first in a series where I’m going to be properly putting Innovo through its paces, checking in at intervals to tell you about my progress and the changes I’m noticing. I don’t want to just give you the theory – I want to give you thorough, honest Innovo reviews, so that if you do want to do something about your pelvic floor, you have all the information you need about Innovo to invest with confidence.

(That sounded very serious didn’t it? I promise to make wee gags too. You have to laugh at stuff remember? You just want to be able to laugh without wetting yourself.)

In this Innovo review post then, I just want to show you exactly what’s involved, what you can expect if you choose to try Innovotherapy for yourself, and to give you a bit of background into the technology.

Let’s get the science out of the way before I get my thighs out shall we? View Post

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I’ve spent most of the last two weeks coughing. I’ve written before about my coughs – they’re pretty annoying, for everyone concerned.

38 years on, and my coughs now have a new twist. Not only do I have to worry about not being able to breathe, generally irritating people etc, but now I have to simultaneously stop myself from weeing in my own pants. It’s such fun! Oh, hang on, a cough is coming… Stop walking, cross your legs… Yep, that’s right, everyone is staring but not to worry, it’s all fine.

(It’s not really fine.)

When you’re feeling rough, and coughing until your head feels like it might explode, a bit of light bladder leakage is like the big, fat, leaky cherry on top of the cake. (A cake made of mud and toothpaste, like that one Mr Mischief makes.) It’s made worse by the fact that no one talks about it. It’s something that effects so many of us, and yet we just go around, quietly crossing our legs, feeling like it’s just us.

There is a silver lining though! If you look hard enough, you can always find a positive right? The silver lining here is that a company called Confitex got in touch recently to ask if I fancied writing about their range of utility underwear, which they’re introducing to the UK, and the cough has given me the perfect introduction.

SMOOTH.

So here I am, breaking the ‘slippage silence’ and talking (again), casually, about bladder leakage.

When I read ‘utility underwear’, I have to admit that my first thought was ‘are these pants for soldiers or something?’. That’s not what it is though. It’s actually incontinence underwear – underwear that has been designed especially to help people experiencing leaks in the urinary department.

The key word for me here is ‘designed’. This isn’t a range of bulky pants that looks like nappies or anything like that, it’s properly designed underwear that looks good, but just happens to have a practical use too. To make the point, see if you can stop the Confitex incontinence underwear in this little collage:

(Don’t tell me I don’t know how to entertain you…)

Confitex incontinence underwearWhat do you reckon?

1 and 4 are actually the Confitex pants, although I think that the model in number 3 looks like she might be doing her best to hold something in.

The point I’m making is that Confitex have designed their range to look like regular underwear. They don’t want to make the whole situation any more awkward or embarrassing than it is already, they just want to make a pair of normal looking pants that can also make people feel comfortable and secure.

I’m not saying we should all give up on our pelvic floor exercises and just slip into a pair of incontinence pants, of course not. We should all be doing everything we can to keep our pelvic floor muscles strong, but sometimes you are going to need a little bit of extra protection.

My second thought, after the thing about soldiers in pants, was that surely a pair of knickers that looked so ordinary wouldn’t be able to actually do very much? I was wrong again.

Confitex underwear is available for both men and women and comes in two levels of absorbency, so you can choose what suits you best. You might be experiencing a little leakage, perhaps you’ve just had a baby, or maybe you’re a man recovering after a proctectomy. The medium absorbency isn’t messing about. That’s a lot of fluid right there:

Confitex incontinence underwear

I think I’d find it hard not to chuck half a cup of tea into my pants, just to see what happened.

Confitex underwear is totally reusable – you can wash and tumble dry it like normal – and it’s made with bamboo fibre, which is super soft and has natural anti-bacterial properties too. If you’re worried about those little leaks and are intrigued to find out more, then just take a look at the Confitex website.

And cross you fingers for me (and your legs) that my cough clears up soon.

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Disclosure – this post is mainly me complaining.

I woke up at about 4am on Christmas morning with what I thought was a migraine. I sometimes get migraines while I’m asleep, and it’s not much fun. You wake up and it takes a little while for you to realise you have a headache, and then WOOSH, there it is.

I thought maybe I was just excited. (I do love Christmas.) I thought perhaps it was just my body’s way of letting go of the pre-Christmas stress, (we had some passport issues…), and getting ready to enjoy itself. It didn’t go away though, and I ended up being a bit of a Christmas damp squib, try as I might to fend things off with my mum’s supply of Lemsips. (She has a bit of a Lemsip habit.)

We flew home from my sister’s in Ireland on the 28th and I thought I’d start to perk up once I was back at home, but my sinuses were not keen on the flight and things didn’t improve.

Fast forward another week and here I am at home, coughing away, generally feeling sorry for myself.

flu and despression

See?

Pathetic isn’t it? View Post

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I’ve lived in my little flat in Taunton for nearly two and a half years now, and last month I finally got round to replacing the curtains in our bedroom. The original curtains were exactly the sort of curtains you’d expect to find in a slightly rough around the edges rented flat – a 1970s swirly brown, floral pattern. I remember the first time fiancé went into my bedroom, apologising in advance for them.

Well now they’re gone, and instead we have two pairs of dark, plain pink blackout curtains. It’s nice, because for as long as the old curtains have been there, I’ve never felt inspired to do anything with the rest of the decor, as nothing really goes with brown swirly flowers.

I’ve been desperate for ages to get some new custom bedding or cushions. I really love fabrics that have a romantic, watercolour look about them, and so when I discovered Bluebellgray, well, I was practically foaming at the mouth. They do fabrics, bedding, wallpaper and homewares and it’s all beautiful – gorgeous bold floral watercolour designs that immediately just lift a room.

I now have these two cushions on my bed. (See the new curtains in the background?) It means I can have plain white bedlinen, but still have big splashes of colour.

Slummy single mummy bedroom

The bunny rabbit is Bertie. Sometimes I arrange Bertie into funny positions on the bed so that every time I go upstairs to the toilet I can look at him and laugh to myself.  View Post

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Okay, I know I normally do short rants, but there is just so much to say on the subject of flexible working isn’t there? Plus I want to talk to you about the Hire Me My Way campaign for more part-time and flexible jobs, and I have a personal story from another blogger to share, so all in all it’s a pretty jam-packed post.

You lucky things!

When you stop to think about ‘work’ as a concept, it’s crazy really. Let’s take your basic office job. A 9am start maybe? An hour for lunch, and then home in time for Pointless and some fish fingers and chips. For starters, the whole idea of everyone going to work and going home at the same time is madness. It’s not wonder we have traffic problems is it?! I mean, who came up with that?! ‘Oh yeah, I know, it would be GREAT if we had everyone try to travel to and from work at the same time everyday! Wouldn’t that be AWESOME?’

No, it’s not awesome.

And then you’ve got the whole productivity issue. All of the research, like this, says that flexible working increases productivity, that when we trust our staff to work from home, or to work compressed hours, or whatever it might be, that we get more out of them. So why are so many employers still so scared to embrace flexible working?

Do they not trust us? Do they imagine that the minute they’re not looking, everyone will just be at home playing on Facebook? Because I hate to break it to you bosses, but there are plenty of people sat at their desks right now sneaking a look at Facebook – keeping them locked in an office for set hours every day isn’t going to solve that.

flexible working campaign hire me my way View Post

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I consider myself very lucky that I’ve never had to worry about fertility. In fact, it’s almost been the opposite. Bee was born when I was 17. (A bit of an accident, although very handily she was born at the end of July, which meant she fitted very nicely into the summer holidays between the first and second year of my A-levels.)

Belle was born when I was 24, conceived in the first month after I came off the pill, thinking to myself ‘I guess it wouldn’t be so bad if I was pregnant at some point in the next year or so.’

It was weird though second time around, as I felt so old, and yet clearly I wasn’t. I was, (and still am – that’s how time works), the youngest in the group of friends I met when Belle was a baby. The extra difference being that they were pretty much all having their first child. None of them had seven year olds in tow.

There is a downside though to all of this.

Because I’ve never really had to think about my fertility, I’m rubbish when it comes to periods. I’ll happily just bumble along through the month, totally oblivious to my own body, until one day I suddenly feel tired and sad, and like I want to stab someone with a fork.

It kind of scares me.

‘Oh no!’ I think to myself. ‘This is it! There’s something wrong with me, I’m going to be sad forever!’

And then the next day I get my period.

Ohhhhhhh! View Post

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