It would be fair to say I’m not a natural crafter. I try really hard, but I lack finesse. Even when I put a lot of thought into something, it tends to end up looking like a small child has made it.

And this is why I have children!

If my craft attempts turn out a little squiffy, I can just say that Belle made them. So today, ‘Belle’ has been making Halloween trick or treat balloons! Seriously though, we did actually make these together and I would suggest that they are exactly the sort of wholesome Halloween craft activity that would be ideal to do as a family. Belle even got a friend from next door over to help, and they had a lot of fun playing with the Balloon Time helium canister and decorating the balloons.

The idea behind them is to have something actually exciting to give out to trick or treaters when they come to call, rather than just chucking them a couple of bags of Haribo and sending them on their way. The trick or treat balloons are filled with helium, and weighed down with a spooky home made box. Inside the box is either a treat – like a Screme Egg – or a trick – like a plastic cockroach. The unsuspecting trick or treater has to choose a balloon and accept the consequences!

Mwahaha!

Here we go then…

Halloween crafts View Post

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I don’t normally wear a lot of make up.

It’s not that I wake up every morning, look in the mirror, and decide that it’s impossible to improve on perfection, it’s more a case of just not knowing where to start. I love the smell when you walk into Boots, but the choice overwhelms me, and even if I did know what to buy, I wouldn’t have a clue how to put it on properly.

I’m sure I’m not alone, which is why the new Outsidethebox Make Up Workshops at Thornbury Castle are an ace idea. They’re a new venture from a woman called Jules, who is both the face of and the brains behind Outsidethebox – a new range of mineral make up that’s totally natural and actively good for your skin. No kidding, if you are too lazy to take this make up off before you go to bed, you could actually be doing yourself a favour.

outsidethebox make up View Post

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The post I wrote yesterday about happiness and money got me thinking.

That story came about because of a chat I’d had with my fiancé on our radio show, and one of the other stories we talked about at the same time was about the apparent happiness curve we all experience through our lives. This story goes that happiness peaks in our mid-twenties, when we’re free of too much responsibility, full of the joys of youth etc, and then rapidly declines as the stress of work and family life kicks in.

Makes sense so far, especially, as we learnt yesterday, for those people earning over £37,000. 

For anyone who is in their 30s, wondering when the curve is going to bottom out and start picking up again, I have bad news. Apparently life is basically a bit shit until retirement. At around 65 you’ll peak again, once you’ve given up work and the kids have finally left home.

Sorry about that.

It got us chatting though about the importance of appreciating those little moments of happiness. You could look at the chart, see a deep and enduring valley of misery spanning 40 years, and just go to bed for a cry, but the truth is that life isn’t really like that. It’s not a smooth curve for a start. It’s like the stock market – investments may grow over time, but along the way you have ups and downs, moments where you see yourself retiring at 40 to the Caribbean and others where you want to chuck it all in and have to hold your nerve.

Happiness comes and goes too. 

everything changes quote

True fact.

Sometimes that’s reassuring. No matter how bad you feel right now, it’s not going to last. Other times, when everything is going well, it can feel scarier, but that’s why you have to concentrate on the ‘happy right now’ moments.

“How often though,” asked my fiancé, as we chatted on air, “do we take the time to actually stop and think about how happy we are right now?”

“Ummm,” I said, wondering if it was a trick question, “a few times a days?”

He looked at me like I was a loon.

“Don’t you?” I said.

“No,” he replied, “hardly ever.”

I had a moment then when I felt like lots of jigsaw pieces were falling into place all at once. All of the things I read about positivity, fear, life, death and human nature all suddenly felt worthwhile. All the ridiculously American positive thinking podcasts I’ve ever listened to – I suddenly realised how valuable they had been. Even if at the time I had wondered what the point of it all was, here was my reassurance. Without knowing it, I have taught myself to think about things in a slightly different way.

Because actually I do take time, every day, to be grateful for something. I do stop and take in my surroundings, feel physical sensations, appreciate delicious smells and tastes, feel the sun on my face. I do do these things. 

So then I had to take a moment to appreciate the fact that I take moments to appreciate things, and that sent me into a little bit of a spin, but you get the point. We have to stop and be glad. No matter where on the curve we’re told we are, there is always something to be happy about, even if it is only for a minute. 

 

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How much money would you like to earn? More importantly, at what point would an increase in salary and responsibility no longer be worth it?

I asked my fiancé this question on the back of a news story we were talking about on our community radio show on Friday. (Yes, it is everything you imagine – a hut in a playground, the noise of coffee cups in the background – it’s wonderful.)

“I’m not sure,” he said, “about £120,000?”

“£120,000??” I said. “You can tell you’ve come from London. Who earns £120,000??”

“Lots of people!” he said.

“Well, no one I know.”

The actual tipping point, according to research randomly conducted by Anchor Cheddar, (cheese? why?!), is just £37,000. 91% of the 2,000 people surveyed believe that there’s a point at which the extra salary simply isn’t worth the extra stress and the impact this has on your life. This point averaged out at £37,396. View Post

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This review of the Leitz Complete Professional Bluetooth Stereo Speaker has been written by my fiancé, because he knows all about things musical. (And I was really busy and he is very kind.)

A few years ago, I was sat on a train going into London. The train was busy with commuters, but rather peaceful. All of a sudden, the silence was broken but a loud distorted racket coming from behind me, that I think was rap. Over the course of half a song, I listened to the narrative of an angry sounding American who, between expletives, was suggesting he’d like to do some things to a lady of the night, which to my uneducated ear sounded neither pleasurable or physically possible.

Everyone was rather British about the situation. Commuters glanced at each other to show their general disgust, and there was an atmosphere of tutting and shaking heads.

I stood up.

“Excuse me, please could you turn that off?”

Having not seen who the music belonged to, I was shocked to see an immaculately dressed woman in her early thirties, holding a smartphone to her head. Perhaps she was deaf.

“No” she replied, “but I’ll turn it down a bit”.

I was shocked and sat down. Other passengers used body language and facial expressions to confirm that I had just made an idiot of myself. Obliviously the noise was antisocial, but I can’t understand why anyone would listen to music that’s distorting.

The way we consume music is changing, and changing fast. Think back to when you first bought music. It was probably on CD, cassette, or even an LP. When I forked out good money for my first single – The Firm’s classic, “Star Trekkin’” as you ask – I had to put it on a record player, delicately place the stylus on the record, and then put it away again for choosing something else to listen to. And records were delicate too – there was what can almost be described as a ceremony in putting music on. The juxtaposition to listening to music now is marked. You type in the name of a song into Google, listen to it for the 30 seconds you like it, and then move on. Listening to music now is different. It’s a commodity that’s available without paying money or paying respect to it and it doesn’t matter how the sound comes out. We all have smartphones that can do and play anything, but they still don’t sound good enough.

Since we moved our living room around, we’ve been watching far less TV and listening to more music and radio, which made a review of the Leitz Complete Professional Bluetooth Stereo Speaker easy to do. Having a Bluetooth speaker in the lounge has meant that whether Jo is listening to (sorry, having a conversation with) The Archers, Belle is dancing, or I’m listening to music, there is a decent speaker without cables all around the room.

review of the Leitz Complete Professional Bluetooth Stereo Speaker

The Leitz Complete Professional Bluetooth Stereo Speaker, a name which trips delicately off the tongue, is stylish and easy to connect. One tap of its aptly named blue button makes the device discoverable to compatible devices. It’s all very simple.

Regardless of what it looks like, the sound quality is good. All too often with smaller speakers, you get a tinny treble end and the bass rattles. Not through this. There’s a discreet rubber lip around the base that means it doesn’t rattle, no matter how high you turn up the volume or how much bass there is.

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I was listening to a podcast yesterday about fear. It’s part of an ongoing positive thinking series called Life is a Marathon by a guy called Bruce Van Horn – his name alone puts a smile on my face, so he’s off to a good start. If you fancy listening to it, I will warn you in advance that it’s very American, and there is a strong religious slant, but I find I can tune that out. I just replace the word ‘God’ with ‘You’ and that gives my self-esteem an extra boost.

Anyway, he was talking about fear, and how it holds us back. He gave the example of a woman trapped in a burning building who was afraid of stairwells. The fireman is talking her down.

“I know you’re scared,” he says. “Do it scared.”

It really made me stop and think. So often we let the fact that we are scared of doing something stop us from doing it, but why? Yes you might be scared, but that’s OK, you can be scared, it doesn’t mean you don’t do it. We feel all kinds of emotions about all kinds of things, but a lot of the time we carry on regardless.

He used another quote to reinforce the point. I’ve not been able to find a source for it, but it’s about peeing your pants, so a good one for the people who found the name Bruce Van Horn amusing.

“Fear,” it goes, roughly, “is wetting your pants. Courage is doing what you have to do with wet pants.”

This guy understands:

feel the fear

Sometimes life is scary. Things will scare you. That’s OK. The true test is to what extent you can carry on regardless. 

Of course it’s easy to say that, less easy to put into practice, because fear can be paralysing. Stood at the top of the high ropes at River Dart Country Park with Belle over the summer I felt the fear. I desperately wanted just to put one foot out onto the rope bridge, but I couldn’t make myself. How might I have felt at the end though if I’d been able to do it scared?

How do you deal with fear? Also, have you ever wet your pants in public? Tell us all about it in the comments…

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You may have seen me showing off my lovely new handbag on Twitter recently.

Here it is:


It’s not only gorgeous in itself but also makes me feel very grown up. This made it perfect to take to the workshop I ran recently, to make sure everyone knew to take me seriously, even though when they gave me a clicker to change the slides I said ‘Ooh! A clicker! Now I feel like a professional!’

(Stay tuned for your 20% Yoshi discount code, so you can get one and be just like me.) View Post

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I’m having a party!

It’s not going to be like the one I had for my 31st birthday, where I turned my garden shed into a cocktail bar and made everyone dress as burlesque dancers, (although that was fun), this one is going to be all about running your own business and it’s taking place on Twitter.

For this one, rather than build my own bar from a bookcase and old plank, I’ve made a nice little advert instead. It was far less messy and I ended up with fewer splinters, which is always nice:

Small business tips

I’ve been running my own business now since 2009, and so I totally understand all of the worries that come with it, whether it be the practical stuff like completing a tax return, or the more emotional issues, like striving for that ever elusive work life balance, or dealing with kids who are sick of you being on your phone when you’re meant to be reading through their homework.

The added dilemma when running your own business, especially in the early days, is that you’re on your own, with no one to answer your questions. It can be hard to know where to go to find the answers without feeling silly.

The truth is though, that there’s no such thing as a silly question, we’ve all been there, and that’s where I come in.

Although I know the common questions, I don’t always have all the answers, so my Twitter chat is going to be supported by experts from Direct Line for Business and Business Support Helpline. Between us we’ll be able to offer tips and information on everything from tax and insurance to social media marketing and more.

If you run your own business, or are considering it, then please do come along on Tuesday 22nd September at 1pm and join in the chat. All you have to do is tweet me with the hashtag #HomeBizChat and we’ll do our best to help and support you and your business in whatever way we can.

If you can’t make it, but still have some questions, you can submit them in advance either as a comment on this post, including your Twitter handle, or to me on Twitter, and we’ll include them in the chat for you.

It would also be fantastic if you could help to spread the word about the event by retweeting this tweet:

See you on the 22nd!

In association with Direct Line for Business

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Why Camp Wilderness?

Well, a couple of weeks ago we arrived home from somewhere quite late – about 9.30pm. I sent Belle straight upstairs to get ready for bed. About fifteen minutes later I went up to give her a kiss goodnight and she was still standing in the middle of her bedroom, coat and shoes on, looking at Instagram.

It’s not cool really, is it? My work is online, but I do try to switch off regularly. It makes me sad that children nowadays have a stronger connection to the internet than to the natural world.

To try and combat this, and make Belle look up at the real world for more than about five seconds, we packed her off at the beginning of the summer holidays to Camp Wilderness. It was a little bit of a drive, made longer by Belle accidentally entering the postcode of their head office in High Wycombe into the sat nav, but it was totally worth it.

Camp Wilderness review View Post

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Not the actual whole room, just the furniture.

We have a funny flat, which has what was the kitchen/living area on the ground floor, then a spiral staircase up the first floor. The staircase opens into what was designed as a living room, but for the last year has been Belle’s bedroom.

It all seemed like a good idea at the time, and it was really. It was just Belle and I when we moved in, so a two seater sofa downstairs was enough for us, and it didn’t matter if I walked through her bedroom to go to the toilet. Now though things are different. My fiancé lives with us, and he’s not small. Adding an extra body – a body that’s over 6 feet tall – onto the two seater sofa has been a bit of a squeeze, and after turning 13 this summer we felt that Belle needed a bit more privacy.

So here we are. I’m now sat upstairs typing this, in Belle’s former bedroom, happily ignoring the fact that downstairs is now some sort of dingy, empty basement kitchen. I shall fill it in due course. View Post

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I’ve never been one to rush into a trend.

I didn’t get my first pair of skinny jeans until 2014 and my apparent lack of awareness when it comes to fashion and general trends – what’s cool and not cool – didn’t especially work in my favour when it came to making friends at school.

A little while ago I was chatting to Bee and dreaming about a holiday. “What I’d really love,” I said, imagining I was the first person ever to have thought of it, “is some sort of really relaxing, warm holiday where I just had to lie down and have someone bring me cocktails. There’d be the sound of running water – maybe it’s a beach?”

“It’s called a beach holiday,” said Bee, eyebrows raised, “it’s what everyone, everywhere wants.”

“Oh.” View Post

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I’ve never owned my own house. It’s probably a good thing if my attitude to car maintenance is anything to go by. (Think strategically placed satsuma, covering engine warning light.)

Sometimes though I do think about what I might do if I was lady of my own manor. Obviously the first thing I would do would be to install a secret door, disguised as a bookcase, but that’s a given. I’d have a spiral staircase too, and big floor to ceiling windows, looking out on one side over London and on the other over the French coast. (This is a fantasy remember.) View Post

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