What does February mean to you? There’s Valentine’s Day of course, if you like that sort of thing, Pancake Day, and, for lots of people, it means the end of Dry January and the opportunity to get properly stuck back into boozing for the rest of the year.

The weather starts to turn too – the mornings have a different coldness about them, a promise of spring, a flavour that makes you want to take huge deep breaths and stare up at the sky. With all of this in mind, here are my favourite things this February:

Feb favourite things View Post

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I had a very rock and roll moment last night.

I was overcome by the urge to sort out the kitchen food cupboards, an urge that I’m sure was slightly annoying as my boyfriend was trying to cook a roast dinner at the time. Our kitchen is small and having a girl sat on the floor surrounded by tins of beans and half empty bags of pasta isn’t helpful when you’re trying to check the rise on your Yorkshire puddings.

It was certainly helpful for me though as I discovered that while I had been frantically buying those fruit yo-yo bear things on my Ocado app in a bid to get Belle to eat fruit in some form, I had actually been stockpiling them at the back of the cupboard. I transferred them to an old biscuit tin and discovered I had enough to feed a family of four for roughly eight days.

With my iPad in hand, sat on the lino, I did a spot of food shopping and menu planning and reckon I will have saved a considerable amount of cash, just by taking half an hour to actually think about meals rather than just panic buying various meats.

It got me thinking about other potential ways that I could save money, so here are a few of my thoughts to inspire you:

Reduce, reuse and recycle

As much as I don’t want to be the kind of person who leaps on you the minute you unwrap a present so that they can fold and save the paper, there is a lot to be said for being a bit more thoughtful when it comes to waste. Things like wrapping paper and padded envelopes are stupidly expensive and given the number of padded envelopes that come through the letterbox, I really can’t justify ever having to buy one.

Get the best deal

I’m pretty good at comparing insurance deals and energy suppliers – Belle has at least four Meerkats – but I’m a little ashamed to say that I have never tried sites where you can save money on your monthly bills phone, TV and broadband bills. Silly isn’t it? It’s just not something I’ve ever thought to do, mainly because I’m terrified that it might mean not being connecting to the internet for a period. This is less for me and more for Belle – how would she monitor her Dance Moms Instagram account effectively?? It’s definitely something to think about though. View Post

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Weather permitting, tomorrow I am flying out to New York to interview some of the cast of the new SpongeBob movie: A Sponge Out of Water.

*acts nonchalant*

Who am I kidding? I am about as chalant as it gets. (Why is chalant not a word? You feel like it should be.)

Firstly, there is the snow. I’m not good in snow. I will fall over and it will be embarrassing.

Second, NEW YORK BABY!! I have only been to America once and that was to go to Arkansas. Even the guards at airport security looked at me funny and asked me why I was bothering.

And finally – the thing I am most chalant about – I have to conduct video interviews with celebrities. When they asked whether I wanted to do written or video interviews I figured ‘in for a penny’ and all that, and so said video before I had chance to think about it. I figured it would look far more impressive and then you would know that I had actually been there and not just sent an interview by email. View Post

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No, I’m not going to go under the stairs as me and come out as Barbara Streisand, this is a post all about my attempt to be one of those bloggers who always has a beautiful collection of vintage objects effortlessly yet stylishly arranged on their mantelpiece. Except I don’t have a mantelpiece and I’m not very stylish, so it’s basically some pictures of me showing you my under stairs area* before and after I move my massive printer and hide it in Bee’s room.

I know right?? It’s going to be awesome. Hold onto you hats.

So basically I have these lovely spiral stairs, which look very pretty indeed when the light is right and you apply a good Instagram filter. See?

under stairs makeover

Nice right? Except my house is pretty small and there isn’t really anywhere to put stuff, so if you look closely you will see that under the stairs I have two printers and a nasty black IKEA table. Grim.  View Post

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I love a good fad.

Some days I decide that soup is going to be my new thing and I drop everything to rush to the kitchen and chop some limp vegetables. Other times I vow that I’m going to start journalling every day and I buy a new notebook. I write my first entry – ‘So hello and welcome to my diary!’ – and then I find six months has passed and I have to write another entry apologising for the intermission.

(I don’t know why I do this in diaries, but I do always write with half a mind to someone else reading it. I like to set the scene. Heaven forbid anyone actually did.)

I started this month (vaguely) determined to complete a dry January, but I think that was mainly because I had drunk so much in December that I felt slightly queasy at the thought of even just a small sherry. Suffice to say it didn’t last. I’ve only had a couple of glasses of wine on a couple of social occasions, so I’m not exactly rolling in the gutter, but it demonstrates nicely my usual lack of willpower.

Today however is day five of my involvement in the Halfords #31FitterDays challenge. The challenge involves a different exercise every day and there is a plan for beginners and those with a little more experience, so you really have no excuse. I’ve been using my new  Garmin Vivofit as part of the challenge to help me track the number of steps I take and generally give me a bit of focus and motivation. (I know it’s the 12th already, but there was a bit of a delay in the arrival of the Vivofit and everyone knows you can’t throw yourself properly into a new fad without the right equipment.) View Post

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How careful are you when it comes to protecting yourself against fraud?

I have one of those fancy shredders that shreds things in two different directions, but it’s under my bed, not plugged in, which isn’t very helpful. Normally I will build up a pile of things for shredding – a pile which I will store alongside the shredder under my bed until it begins to spill out onto the floor – but sometimes I am just too lazy to walk upstairs and will chuck the odd thing in the recycling.

I have ex-Boyfriend’s voice in my head the whole time of course, scolding me over my careless approach to fraud protection, and depending on my mood that can go one of two ways; either I accept that he always was more sensible about stuff like that and I make the effort to climb the stairs, or I think ‘well sod you, I don’t have to do what you say any more’ and it’s all I can do not to post my sort code and account number on Twitter. (Which again just proves that he is generally far more mature about things than me.)

I digress.

Fraud isn’t just about people rummaging through your recycling for old credit card bills of course. It can happen to anyone, any time, and it’s important therefore to understand exactly how you might be at risk and what steps you can take to prevent becoming a victim. Did you know for example that £27.5million of cheque fraud is committed every year in the UK? Who even uses cheques any more? Surely just the presentation of a cheque as payment for goods or services would be enough to make anyone suspicious?

Natwest have put together some tips in the form of the funky little graphic below, so you can get up to speed on the risks.

Have you ever been the victim of fraud? What do you do to protect you and your family?

Credit – Natwest

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This week I hired a carpet cleaner and cleaned all of my carpets.

That sounds like a bigger project than it actually is – my house is pretty tiny and only has four fairly small carpeted rooms – but it still took me about four hours of furniture shifting and emptying bucket after bucket of filthy water into the bath. It is Christmas after all, the time to really treat yourself.

I felt pretty good about it, never having cleaned a carpet in my life before, and my bedroom carpet in particular came up really nicely; the beer stain is completely gone now. (Don’t ask.) I even think it counts as exercise.

Now my carpets are your bog standard plain colours, nothing fancy here, so I was intrigued when UK Flooring Direct got in touch with me to ask me to take at look at what they think could be the flooring of the future – printed floor designs.

Dum dum dum dum!! View Post

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This is a review from my 12 year old daughter Belle. All words and pictures are her own. 

Makie Doll

Recently my mum asked me if I wanted to design my own doll and then write mine own review it, obviously any girl would not turn up the opportunity to create and customise their own doll! So this is my review of my Makie Doll!

I spent along time deciding if I wanted to base it on a person or just make it up. In the end I decided to just make it up as I went along!

The first stage of completing your Makie Doll is to choose the skin colour. Next you choose the clothes and then the hair style. There is a button in the bottom corner to make the face more detailed so I used this to change the shape of the ears and eyebrows, etc. View Post

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Today I have a Slow Watch review from my boyfriend. If you like this, check out his attempts at a juice detox.

Slow watch review

Somewhere on the internet, there must be some stats about how the global sales of watches have sunk since the mobile phone market has monopolised everything we do.  I don’t think I had worn a watch for about ten years, having always relied on my smart phone for the time of day. 

At the best of times, I can be described as a phone addict – I’m constantly checking my phone and if I was totally honest with myself, most of the time I don’t know quite what I’m checking it for.  In meetings,* there is nothing more blatant and rude than someone with their phone on the table, constantly pressing the home key to find out what time it is, or to check if something far more interesting has happened in their virtual life outside the room. View Post

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A guest post from my lovely boyfriend.

Cornerstone razor

Ask any man and they’ll tell you the same thing; as a kid, you see starting to shave as a massive leap forward into the world as an adult man. You watch your Dad shaving for years and long for the day when you can start pulling faces in the mirror whilst covered in shaving foam. I was always puzzled why my Dad used to tell me that I should enjoy the pre-shaving days, as the process was a total faff which would soon become a daily burden. I assumed he was talking total rubbish, but after a couple of years of shaving rash, nicks and cuts, I realised that shaving really is a pain.
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I’ve been spending a lot of time over the last few weeks browsing the internet for lovely things. I could pretend it has all been in the name of Christmas shopping but we all know that would be a lie. I just like doing anything other than working.

Here are four of my favourite things this month:

favourite things

A) This is a quote from A Midsummer Night’s Dream that makes me think of Belle, who is very little but very fierce. It comes from Bookishly, a fab company making literary inspired gifts. I love the style of these and would happily cover my walls with them. Get 20% off orders at Bookishly with the code SSMUMMY20.

B) This green tea shampoo is from a company called O’Right, and markets itself as the world’s first carbon neutral shampoo. The idea behind the brand is to create green products without compromising on quality, and they have definitely achieved that. Not only is the shampoo itself fantastic and eco-friendly, but if you plant the (beautiful) bottle it will grow into a tree. I’m not even kidding, an actual tree. How cool is that??

C) You know you should eat more fruit, but really you’d rather have a bag of crisps right? Well, I may have the answer here to all of your prayers. Emily Fruit Crisps are made just with real fruit and a little oil. They are DELICIOUS. I had a packet of the pineapple this morning and they were wonderfully crispy and full of flavour. The packaging is just gorgeous too. I’m looking forward to these becoming available in a supermarket near me.

D) Stack Magazines is a genius idea from a guy called Steven Watson, a magazine subscription with a difference. Every month Stack will send you a different independent magazine; you won’t know what it’s going to be but you will know that it will be interesting, inspiring and something a little bit unusual. Who doesn’t like surprises?

Disclosure: I was sent some shampoo and some fruit crisps to try out.

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