Over the last couple of weeks I’ve diarised family birthdays, created an emergency card and present kit and reorganised my medicine box, so I feel I may as well just give in, buy myself a floral pinny, don a pair of beige stockings and become an actual 1950s housewife.

It could be quite fun. Apart from the fact of having to earn money. That’s trickier when you spend all of your time glazing fruit loaves.

Still, perhaps in spirit at least?

Do get myself in the mood, I had a browse at the cleaning section of the Kleeneze website. If I am to become a domestic goddess I definitely have to get over my dislike of anything that involves getting my hands wet.

It was a revelation! Who knew that cleaning wasn’t just swooshing your hand around the sink a bit after you clean your teeth? There are all sorts of cleaning products out there that I didn’t even know existed. Here are four of my favourites. View Post

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Do you ever look at infographics and wonder ‘what does that even mean?!’

I do.

That’s the thing about statistics though isn’t it? You can make them show whatever you want if you just display them in the right way. It was following this train of thought last night that led to me buying the domain name madeupinfographics.com. (As you do). I thought it might be fun to just make stuff up, present it nicely and see if people still liked them as much even if they weren’t conveying any useful information. It’s basically what I do with my blog anyway, but with more charts.

The slight hitch in my plan is that until this morning I had never actually made a made up infographic, (or a regular one for that matter), but I figured it couldn’t be too hard surely?

This is my first attempt.

Would you read a blog of made up infographics?

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Have you ever been to a production of Twelfth Night where you have been invited on stage for a shot of tequila?

Come to think of it, have you ever been to a production of anything where that has happened?

Neither had I until last Thursday.

I was invited along to Bristol’s Tobacco Factory to check out their new comfy seating and watch the Filter Theatre Company’s production of Twelfth Night, and was jolly glad I said yes – not only did I get a tequila, but half way through, as some sort of quirky-theatre-company-interpretation-of-Shakespeare thing, they had pizza delivered for the audience. Very avant-garde.

(Be warned, this is the level of my theatrical review skills.) View Post

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A post about shoes from Bee…

I opened the box, my hands trembling. There they were. The most gorgeous shoes I had ever seen. I stared at them for a while, taking in their beauty, memorising them. They caught me looking and I turned my head away blushing.

I carefully put them on and they fitted me perfectly, just like I knew they would. I stood up and looked in the mirror. We looked great together, like we were made for each other. View Post

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Mortgages are apparently at their most affordable level in 14 years. This could be good news for me as it was around 14 years ago that my Gran offered to lend me the money for a deposit for a house and I said ‘Nah, that’s alright, I’ve got loads of time to worry about things like that.’

D’oh!

A couple of years later and the rented house I was living in had doubled in value and it appeared that I had missed the property boat for good.

(I doubt I could even afford a boat.) View Post

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I am at the age now where when confronted by an unfamiliar remote control I panic and don’t know which buttons to press.

When I recently upgraded my phone I specifically chose the exact same model as Boyfriend, just so that he could show me how to work it. I currently have an HTC One X+, so had just about got to grips with Android, when I was asked to review the Nokia Lumia 925 with Windows.

Argh!

*deep breaths*

‘You can do it,’ I reassured myself. ‘If you can give birth to two children and run your own business then surely you can get to grips with a new phone?’ View Post

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I’ve become a bit Gromit obsessed this summer. If you follow me on Facebook or Instagram then you may have noticed a theme.

*ahem*

Gromits in Bristol

It’s subtle, but the signs are there.

I am extremely proud that we managed to see all 80 Gromits and am hoping that it will be one of those things that Belle remembers all her life – the two of us trailing around Bristol, taking pictures of plastic dogs…

Hmmm. View Post

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I should probably come clean before you get too excited and say that this isn’t an instructional post – I don’t actually have the answers to staying motivated when you work from home. This post is more of an act of procrastination, some random musings while I gear myself up to do something that’s actually on my list. If anything I was sort of hoping that you might read this and then send me some ideas.

So.

*Awkward pause while I wait for the people who are bored already to make their excuses and scrap their chairs*

Today was back to school day. View Post

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I had to take a bus this week. It was only a short trip, so I felt that with enough extra strong mints I could bear the travel sickness.

What I wasn’t prepared for however, and something that no amount of minty treats could distract me from, was the man sat next to me who sniffed 104 times.

Yes I counted.

I sensed straight away that he was going to be trouble, and so used the counting as a form of self-control to prevent me from punching him in the face and giving him something to actually sniff about. View Post

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Have you ever been in Homesense? I hadn’t until last month. In fact to be honest I had never even heard of it. (I am not very good at shopping).

Basically it’s TK Maxx for your home, but without so much undignified rummaging – brand names but at discounts of up to 60% every day. I must admit that I find TK Maxx a little bit scary and am never sure where to start, so when Homesense invited me to their Bristol store to have a look round and buy myself a little something nice I was a bit nervous.

I needn’t have worried though. Homesense is lovely – everything is very well laid out and displayed, and definitely doesn’t have a bargain store feel about it. What’s nice too is the stock is permanently changing (from day to day, not while you’re actually in the store in some sort of magical Harry Potter way), so you could go back at any time and discover all sorts of new stuff.

This was one of my favourite displays. I do love a nice lantern. View Post

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Calling all bargain hunters! Today I want to tell you all about on of the newest voucher code kids on the block – www.myfavouritevouchercodes.co.uk! Bear with me, it is more exciting than it sounds…

Last weekend was Belle’s 11th birthday. Finding school friends for parties in the middle of the summer holidays is always tricky so this year we went for a bit of a family sleepover (yes I slept on the floor…) with Belle’s favourite food – delivered pizza.*

With delivered pizza I get to score twice – Belle thinks I am super cool and generous, but I get to save money, as we are voucher code fiends. It’s only been in the last few years that I have discovered the joy that is saving money simply by googling something, (thank you to Boyfriend for that – he really was made for a career in procurement), but now there is no going back. Why on earth would you pay full price for something if you could just tappety tap and get money off? It would be madness. View Post

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I had a bit of an embarrassing moment this weekend. I felt kind of silly about it, so thought it was probably something I should share. What is a blog for after all if not for making yourself look silly in front of far more people than is strictly necessary?

It happened on Sunday when I was down in Somerset visiting my family. My sister lives just around the corner from my mum and she asked if I wanted to pop and see what they had done to their kitchen – they have been doing some refurbishments and had knocked down a wall and blocked up a couple of doors.

Sounds harmless enough doesn’t it?

So I got there, and went into the hall. I looked at where the door from the hall into the kitchen had been and saw a blank wall. “What do you think?” my sister asked.

“It looks good!” I said. And burst into tears.

Awkward. View Post

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