I’ve had a bit of a realisation over the last couple of weeks. As I’ve started thinking about wedding planning it occurred to me that I very rarely spend any sort of money on anything. That sounds a bit silly, because I do spend quite a bit of money generally, but it’s always on little things like books or magazines or meals out; impulse buys rather than projects.

Thinking about a wedding though I’ve realised how enjoyable it is to actually plan to spend money, to research things you like and don’t like, to consider colours and themes. It’s jolly good fun and has opened up a whole new avenue of cutting and sticking to me – now, at last, I understand why people get excited about interiors and renovations rather than just adopting my approach of buying cushions randomly.

It’s got me thinking then about my home, the bits of it I like and the bits that make me curl my mouth up and quickly look away. If I can potentially plan a wedding, revamping a room in my house is going to be a piece of cake surely?

Here are five things I think it’s important to consider when planning a living room makeover: View Post

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At last!

It’s going to be a whole year in June since we moved to Taunton and I’ve finally got round to finishing the unpacking. (I refer here only to indoors unpacking. My car port still resembles a poor quality car boot sale.) Although we physically moved everything in in record time, and my new pastel wine glasses were looking pretty on the kitchen shelves within days, (priorities), there have been other areas of the house that have been rather neglected.

Take the under stairs cupboard for instance, (which isn’t actually under the stairs, but has a similar vibe.) When we moved in, because the flat is so small, I had several boxes of miscellaneous gubbins that I just didn’t have space for. This included countless leads for appliances I’m not sure I ever owned, suspect shoes that really should have been donated to charity some years ago, and some old bits of wood that I’m sure I once intended to make into shelves. Said items stayed in a heap in this cupboard for a good eight months before I decided to sort them out. View Post

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This article was updated in June 2024

A couple of weeks ago I had an appointment with Cooperative Funeralcare, an appointment to plan my own funeral. It doesn’t exactly sound like a day out at the races does it? Funnily enough though, it turned out to be a pretty fascinating couple of hours.

I went along to Cooperative Funeralcare in Taunton, taking my boyfriend with me, knowing that he would ask lots of good questions. It was part of a project I’m doing at the moment with The Cooperative, exploring the different strands of their work and putting their services to the test, and I was interested to find out exactly what would be involved in planning my own funeral.

I’ve played a part in planning a couple of funerals, but they have been in those classic circumstances where you are all a little bit emotional and overwhelmed and plans are made in a rush. No one is 100% sure of what the person who has died would have actually wanted and you muddle through, doing the best you can, (not to mention trying to find the money to foot the bill).

A pre-paid funeral plan takes a different approach; instead of leaving the stress, cost and decision making process up to your loved ones, you invest a little bit of time and money upfront and make things simple.

It sounds like such an obvious idea doesn’t it? You get to choose exactly what you want and pay for it up front at today’s prices. This means it ends up being a lot cheaper, (the cost of funerals has doubled just in the last ten years!), and it means those days and weeks after your death are that much easier for your family. So why don’t we all do it?

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Today, May 11th, is the first ever Somerset Day. Somerset Day has been established to celebrate everything that is wonderful about Somerset; it’s not just that place you drive through on your way to Cornwall you know.

I have lived in Somerset since I was eight years old, aside from my brief fling with Bristol, in a total of 18 different houses. Even though I loved living in Bristol, and had dreamt about it for years, I still felt nostalgic for what I consider my home county. What’s not to love about a country that includes historic cities like Bath, iconic towns such as Glastonbury, beautiful countryside and coastline?

For me though, the things I love about Somerset are more personal, like the drive over the hills between Taunton and Bridgwater. I must have made the journey hundreds of times and yet it still has something special about it. Every single time I drive it I think of my Gran, driving every Saturday morning from her home in Bridgwater to go to Taunton. She would visit the library, (she loved crime fiction) and Marks & Spencer, (she always had a little stack of their rich tea fingers in the morning), before going for coffee in the County Stores. She’d then drive back across the hills, stopping on the way at Hawkridge reservoir for a while to look at the view. View Post

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I’m not asking, I’ve already done it, I’m just hoping that ‘Who should I vote for?’ will get me a lot of search engine traffic today.

Not really.

(Partly).

I do actually want to be helpful though as I personally believe it’s VERY IMPORTANT INDEED that everyone votes. People died you know. All over the world people are still fighting hard for the right to vote, so please use yours.

Like me.

Who should I vote for?

If you are still asking yourself ‘who should I vote for?’ then why not take the Vote for Policies quiz? It anonymises policies from the main parties, meaning you pick by policy and not personality. At the end it tells you who you should vote for based on the policies you support. The results are interesting and the process is only slightly overshadowed by the fear of discovering you’re a secret UKIP supporter. View Post

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This Zeek review was written in May 2015, so some of the screenshots my be out of date, but the code is a current one.

I am writing this post from Starbucks where I am sipping my discount skinny hazelnut macchiato, thanks to a new app called Zeek. I’m not normally one for voucher apps but the concept behind Zeek is so simple it literally feels like you’d be stupid not to use it.

Read on for your £5 Zeek promo code.

How many times have you been given a gift voucher, maybe for a birthday or Christmas, and found yourself either buying something you don’t really want, just to use it, or discovering it the week after it expires in your purse and getting annoyed with yourself? Zeek is the answer to that problem, providing a secure marketplace for people to buy and sell unwanted vouchers. The benefit as a seller is that you get the cash instead and for buyers, there’s a discount of around 5-20% on every voucher.

I didn’t have any vouchers to sell but I was happy to put it to the test from a buyer’s point of view as there were plenty of vouchers on offer for stores that I would normally spend in. It’s ridiculously easy to use, just download the app and start browsing. You can browse the hot vouchers, search by category, or look up individual brands. When you’re ready to buy you just hit the button and you’ll be asked to pay either by card or through a Payapl account. (I was given some credit to test the app, hence only having to pay £1 towards my voucher).     View Post

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As you know, I’m doing another project at the moment with The Co-operative. This one is about funeral planning; more specifically, pre-paid funeral plans. (I’ll be hosting a Twitter chat at 1pm on May 13th, so do come and join in if you want to find out more.)

As part of the process I visited my local Co-operative Funeralcare office in Taunton, and I’ve been up to Manchester to interview David Collingwood, one of the top bods in the world of funerals. More on all this later though, for now I want to concentrate on something a bit more fun.

Fun might not be the first word that springs to mind of when you think of funeral planning, but actually funerals are becoming more and more an opportunity to celebrate somebody’s life rather than the sombre occasions of old, and there are loads of ways that you can personalise a funeral to make it something positive and yes, even fun. One of the main benefits of pre-planning your own funeral is that you aren’t doing it through a haze of grief, so you can actually take the time to properly think about what you want and how you want to be remembered. View Post

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I made a decision this year not to go to any of the big blogging conferences. For the last few years I’ve gone to at least one, mainly due to the classic ‘fear of missing out’ syndrome; when you’re not there it feels like everyone else in the whole wide world is, and you’re sure they are all having an amazing time. The reality of these big events for me though is that I get overwhelmed by the sheer volume of people and the number of brands that instead of networking I hide in the toilets. (Despite my cocky online exterior I am actually pretty shy.)

Do you ever feel like this at big events? So overwhelmed with the potential to connect with people that you end up paralysed?

I was a little nervous then last Friday heading off to the Talk to Mums blog brunch in London. I accepted the invitation as a mini challenge to myself – if I wasn’t going to go to a conference I felt I should at least make the effort to go to more events and to meet some people face to face. Also, I was a speaker, talking about how to up your blogging game, so you really can’t hide in the toilets for that.

I wasn’t sure what to expect, as Talk to Mums a new venture, but I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the event. It was small enough to feel intimate and manageable, but big enough to have felt worth the trip. I had plenty of time to chat to other bloggers plus there was time to meet a lot of the brands properly and to talk about their plans, rather than having to shove my way to the front of a crowd just to pick up a free pen. View Post

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OK, so it’s nearly May, but April has been a busy month, so sorry about that. We’ve been away, it has been my birthday, and something else has happened, something quite special, that I’m going to tell you about in a couple of weeks. Watch this space.

In the meantime, you’ll have to make do with hearing about some of my favourite products from this month. If you’ve discovered anything new and want to share then please do, I love an excuse to buy new treats.

Method cleaning products bramley toiletries Human + Kind Neal's Yard View Post

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Today I have another guest post from my boyfriend. My sister and I decided we should from now on refer to him as Rupert. He is not called Rupert. If you like the cut of his jib you can follow his ramblings on Twitter.

Standon Calling festival camping

“Have you ever been to a music festival?” Jo asks.

“Of course!” I scoff.

A few seconds later, I look up to see if Jo is observing me for signs of a caveat to my reply.[I was.]

“Really?”

“I’ve been to the Proms”. I add. “And the Three Choirs Festival. They’re both music festivals”.

I’ll say it for you. What a dick. [A little harsh.] View Post

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I was sat working this morning with the kitchen window open. I could hear children outside playing the street and it gave me a real feeling of spring. Then some small boys started kicking a football repeatedly against my wall and the images of daffodils and gambolling lambs where replaced with an urge to throw a bucket of cold water out of the window at the offending footballers.

Still, for a minute there I was very nearly full of the joys of spring and was beginning to imagine the spring time adventures Belle and I might have, skipping hand in hand through a flower filled meadow, pretty summer dresses flapping around our knees, the air thick with the sound of her laughter.*

A mummy can dream can’t she?

To continue the fantasy, I spent a happy hour browsing Melijoe.com (whilst Belle played on her laptop upstairs), dressing up my springtime family in the latest spring trends for children. And yes, before you say anything, I do know what the spring trends are.**

Spring fashion trends for kids at Melijoe.com View Post

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Belle has been on the case for me again this week, putting together one of her little videos, this time for a kids’ clothes website called Melijoe.com. Belle’s technological abilities always impress me – she literally went into the garden on her own with her phone, came back in, disappeared upstairs for about ten minutes and then presented me with a 30 second video, set to music, with captions.

How did she even take the pictures on her own??

The girl is a genius.

Melijoe.com caters for children from birth up to 16 years old, which in itself is a draw for me – so many kids’ clothes websites only go up to 10 or 11 years old, and it can be hard to find clothes for Belle that are actually for children and yet stylish and durable at the same time. So often it feels like the choice is between cheap man-made fabrics with garish cartoon characters on or crop tops and leopard print, as though the average 12 year old is often to be found ‘in da club’ at weekends.

Belle was in heaven picking her items from Melijoe.com; there are literally thousands of things to choose from. I did my best to be patient, but confess there were moments when I wished their collection wasn’t quite as comprehensive, just so that she would get on and choose. In the end she went for a new pair of summer pyjamas, with shorts instead of long trousers, and an embroidered white dress and cardigan. I would have put money on the dress as Belle has a very girly side to her and loves a bit of voile. The dress is beautiful, and as Belle says in her video, the detail is stunning:

Melijoe.com dressI was a little bit worried about sizing, as I’ve always thought that Belle was small for her age, but everything fits perfectly; Belle seems to have gone through a real spurt lately height wise, which is nice for her as she has always felt a bit uncomfortable being the smallest in class, but not so nice for me as I can no longer get away with squeezing her into her age 8-9 jeans and telling her they are intentionally cropped.  View Post

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