We may still be bundling up in our warmest coats, jumpers, scarves, and mittens, but pretty soon it will be time to shove your woolies to the back of the wardrobe and make space for our spring clothes. Well known as I am for my fashion sense, here are some pieces that are trending for spring:
Bermuda Shorts
Yep, you read that right. Bermuda shorts are apparently trending for spring and summer. View Post
Not long after we’d met, I regaled Boyfriend with a fascinating tale about Paperchase mugs. It really was a cracking story, involving a detailed analysis of what in my mind makes the perfect mug, and how disappointed I was that Paperchase had reduced the thickness of their rims.
It was almost certainly the moment when Boyfriend realised I was The One.
It did make me wonder though whether it might not be a bad idea to broaden my mug horizons. I drink a lot of tea, so mugs play a large role in my daily life, so it’s normal* that over the years I have developed a Preferred Mug Shape. This is the original Paperchase mug that pretty much encapsulates everything I love about a mug – a good, sturdy shape, not tall and thin, not flaring out at the top into a silly lip, and made of a good chunky china, with a good thick rim.
Over the last few months though, I have been experimenting, pushing out my mug boundaries, and now have three new favourites. Talk about living life on the edge.
OK, so what have we got…
Now this is one is a bit of a wild card, as normally I don’t like Emma Bridgewater. This mug though was a gift from a very good friend, and even though it’s shape flies in the face of sensible mug design – (a base wider than the top?? Crazy times) – I do love it, if not least for the message:
With this next mug, I am challenging my rim preferences.** Normally I like a mug with thick sides, but this is a finer bone china. I absolutely love the design though. I’m a big fan of waves, and it reminds me of one of my favourite pictures – The Great Wave Off Kanagawa – which I actually have as a laptop cover. This mug comes from My Rosie Lee, a lovely company bringing together British design and manufacturing.
Last but not least is the newest mug in my collection. This one comes from Ducky Dora and I love its chunkiness. There’s no messing with this mug, it is proper sturdy, hand painted, and made from eco-friendly terracotta. It’s the kind of mug you could wrap your hands around in front of a bonfire on a cool autumn evening.
Now I don’t for a minute believe I’m the only person who is fussy about mugs, so what are your pet mug hates?
*Definitely normal
**Rim preferences are definitely a thing
As regular readers will know, I love a spot of crafting.
OK, that’s a bit of a lie. I’m not a natural crafter Knitty Mummy style, but I do have good intentions. I can knit. I can draw a bit if the thing I’m drawing is a plant, and I do quite enjoy cutting things out.
It’s not completely ridiculous then that I was invited for an evening of crafting fun with interior designer Danielle Proud and Kenco. The event was held to highlight the new Kenco Rewards Club, where you collect points and trade them in for lovely eco-friendly goodies. It was also showcasing this gorgeous new cup that has been designed by Danielle for Kenco, to encourage people to cut down on the number of disposable coffee cups they use, and to refill this one instead. View Post
Fancy spicing up dinner time without having to get dressed up in suspenders and a feather boa?
Of course you do. No one wants feathers in their lasagne.
If you can handle a bit of a kick, get yourself some chilli tomato pickle from Love Pickle. We cracked open the mild version this week with our toad in the hole and although it made my lips burn a little bit, Boyfriend told me I was being a baby, that it was delicious, and not hot at all. This is the man though that would put hot sauce on everything if I let him. View Post
If it had risen in line with house prices over the last forty years, the average weekly shop would now cost £453.
Yep, that’s £453 for food for a family every week.
When Shelter told me this I was absolutely horrified. “Bloody hell,” I said to them, “it’s no wonder I can’t afford to buy a house is it?” Shelter did the research to highlight how for many people in the UK, that classic dream of owning your own home, and providing a sense of security for your family, is simply impossible. View Post
Today I am taking part in a blog tour. Yes yes, I know, yawn yawn, but pay attention please because this blog tour is promoting a very special book. (Plus you get a nose round the author’s house.)
Lunchtime by Rebecca Cobb is beautiful, her illustrations are adorable and Rebecca herself is lovely. Lunchtime is, as Julia Donaldson said, “Funny and charming – as delicious as the little girl’s dinner.”
But then I would say all these nice things wouldn’t I?
Why?
Because Rebecca is my step-sister.
I know, cool right? What a talented family we are! (And renowned for our modesty.)
I have already mentioned Lunchtime, but it was in a post that was a bit crowded with other things, like my collection of jugs in the shape of chickens where the milk comes out of their beak, so in this post we get to find out a little bit more about Rebecca and where she works.
“This is what my work space looks like,” says Rebecca. “It is very exciting because a couple of months ago it looked like this”:
“And then we attacked it with a crowbar and it looked like this”:
“And now it looks like this”:
“As you can see it is still a work in progress” says Rebecca, “but compared to the rest of the house, which is a bit of a building site, it is the most finished room. This is also our bedroom at the moment and having a bed right next to my desk makes it very tempting to sit in bed under the duvet to do my drawing, especially when the weather is so cold. But I tried it the other day and instantly fell asleep for 3 hours so I have banned myself from doing that!”
“I mostly draw at my lightbox because even when I do not have it switched on I like the smooth surface of the glass to draw on. I have it right in front of the window and I can look out at the garden which is a bit derelict at the moment, like the rest of the house, but it is full of birds and the next door neighbour’s cats. One of the many brilliant things about moving into our house is that we can now have a pet and I cannot wait to get a kitten!’
Lunchtime is doing a blog tour to celebrate its release in paperback so now you have no excuse for not buying it, even if you are a bit of a skinflint.
Last month I was asked to take part in a spending challenge. I got quite excited initially, imaging a Supermarket Sweep style dash around the shops, sweeping make-up and sweeties into a trolley.
No such luck.
The challenge was actually to reduce the amount of money I spent as part of a project by Voucher Codes called Small Change/Big Difference. The challenge asks you to think about the little amounts of money you fritter away of things like coffees and cake, and to commit to cutting back.
First off you can calculate just how much money you spend on things like this in a year with their special calculator – you put in what you have a week and it calculates your annual expenditure. I felt pretty smug filling it out, as I don’t smoke and don’t drink much, but was quite taken aback by how much I spend essentially just on snacks:
Goodness me. It seems like such a lot when you look at it like that doesn’t it? I work from home, so quite often pop to the café round the corner to work for a few hours for a change of scene. Seems like that could be an expensive habit.
Once I had shocked myself into action, I then had to spend two weeks trying as hard as possible to cut back on all those little extras that add up over the course of a year. There were quite a few obvious areas of weakness for me, so here’s how I got on:
Cafes
I do love a nice café. It’s silly, because I know I could just make a cup of tea at home for about two pence, but there is something so much lovelier about having someone else make it for you and enjoying it surrounded by people chatting and laughing. It’s just nice.
For two weeks though, I didn’t go to my local café once. I reckon I saved about £15 altogether, but I’m not entirely convinced this one is worth it for me. Working from home can be pretty lonely, and getting out of the house and being around other people for a couple of hours can make all the difference. £30 a month seems a small price to pay for my sanity.
Magazines and newspapers
This is definitely a weakness for me. It wouldn’t be so bad if I actually read them, but all that happens normally is that I end up with about four weeks’ worth of Guardian Weekend magazines in a pile, unread. I don’t go out of my way to buy anything, but if I’m at the station or in a supermarket (which doesn’t happen often as Boyfriend doesn’t trust me to do the shopping), I’m quite often tempted to just pick something up as a treat.
For two weeks then I didn’t buy anything. So that’s two Saturday Guardians and probably one or two magazines – £10 or so altogether? Also, because I didn’t buy a magazine, I wasn’t drawn in to one of the ‘subscribe now for 68% of the usual cover price and get a free soap worth £37’ offers. Bargain.
Other miscellaneous nonsense
I tend quite often to shop, much like I eat, out of boredom. This is a risky strategy as I get bored easily. In early January for instance, bored of updating Facebook statuses and writing about goodness knows what, I went online and bought a bone china tea set hand painted with robins.
I think you get the point.
For two weeks though I tried my very best not to do this. It was tough, as I was in London a couple of times during the fortnight, each time with a couple of hours to kill in the middle of the day. During my first visit, it didn’t go so well, and I ended up with three miniature mounted photographs of London landmarks. Oopps.
On my second trip though, I did better. I even tested myself with a visit to the V&A museum shop, but resisted the urge to buy anything at all, not even a postcard, although I really quite wanted to buy a lion necklace that was in the sale. I did like this card, but satisfied myself by just taking a picture rather than buying it.
What a good girl I am.
The lion necklace was £45, so I consider this £45 saved.
What are your bad money habits? How much do you think you could save if you cut out just one small pleasure?
Produced in association with VoucherCodes.co.uk
I fear that Belle is getting a little cynical.
She came home from school on Friday with the sad news that this year she hadn’t made it into the school dance troupe. “Never mind,” I said, “I’ve got you a little something to make up for it!”
She looked suspicious.
“What if I had got in?” she asked.
“Well, ” I said, caught a little off guard, “it would have been a congratulation present!”
“Did you buy it or do I have to review it?” she asked.
Damn.
Like it or not, it’s the time of the year for making well-meaning resolutions. Obviously this year I will be losing weight, getting fit, reading 200 books, donating half my disposable income to charity, that sort of thing.
OK, maybe not, but it’s nice to have a few good intentions, especially after spending most of December eating mince pies and Elizabeth Shaw mints for breakfast. That’s why when I was offered to review Skinny Sprinkles again, and stepped with trepidation onto the scales for the first time in about three months, I thought I’d better say yes. View Post
Most people will have what they call a signature dish – something they are really good at, and cook a lot. As far as I know, it is compulsory for all men for this to be spaghetti bolognese. I have two signature dishes. (Greedy). One is called ‘crap from the freezer’ and the other is ‘pasta with things I found in the fridge’. View Post
In case you didn’t know, (do you not follow me on Twitter or something??), I’ve recently set up a new business with my friend Rin*, an interiors journalist. The essence of our business is to provide marketing and PR training to small businesses, to equip them with the skills and confidence they need to shout about their business, make social media work for them, and get journalists’ attention.
(That sounds rather good doesn’t it? Like a proper grown-up business.)
There are some bits of the business, like registering for corporation tax and taking out insurance, that aren’t exactly thrilling, but there are other aspects that we’ve been really enjoying. If you are thinking of setting up your own business in 2013, these are the parts I think you’ll love:
Choosing a name
So long as no-one else has registered it already, you can choose any name you like for your new business. Any name at all! How cool is that? You could be Dog Bowl Media or Pineapple Chunk Construction Limited – absolutely anything that takes your fancy. We’re called Inside Scoop. Nothing to do with ice cream.
For all your marketing and PR training needs!
Getting business cards
This is possibly my Best Bit. I love all kinds of stationery so getting official business cards is really exciting! Make sure your business card includes all essential information such as your name, business name, website and contact details and do double double check everything is correct before you go to print. Compare prices too – perhaps a local printer and an online service like Instant Print. We went for rounded corners on ours – always the mark of a professional.
Becoming a Company Director
Because we’re a registered company, both Rin and I are now officially Company Directors. Now when I have to write a bio for anything I write ‘Jo Middleton is an award-winning blogger and Director of media training company Inside Scoop’. I’m almost too intimidated to look in the mirror in the morning quite frankly.
Business meetings
I know this is supposed to be the boring bit, but the great thing about setting up a business with a friend is that business meetings are actually coffee and waffles in your favourite cafe with a bit of a chat about something nice like business cards or magazines that we really like or cushions we want to buy. It’s hardly like work at all really. We probably should actually cover more of the work element to be honest.
Do you run your own business? What’s your favourite part of being your own boss?
*This makes me sounds like my mum, who always refers to people as a phrase rather than a name – ‘my friend Andrea’ or ‘my cousin Mandy’.
When I was first offered the opportunity to review a Google Samsung Chromebook I have to admit I was a little sceptical. I calculated the PC/laptop/smartphone/iPod touch to actual humans ratio in our house to be roughly 3:1. Did we really need another gadget?
Turns out though that I was a little stuck in my ways, and what I really needed was a kick up the technological backside.
It’s amazing really. I’m meant to be a social media expert, yet technology sort of scares me. I like knowing what’s what, and having the same devices doing the same things they’ve always done. The Google Chromebook has taken me out of my ridiculous old-person comfort zone and forced me to experiment and explore just what technology is capable of.
First off, I love the Google Chromebook because it is so damn fast. One of the things that annoys me most about my laptop is that it takes so long to whirr itself into action whenever you switch it on. The Google Chromebook is just there, in seconds, tail wagging, ready to play. This makes it perfect for having lying around on the coffee table – when any of us want to quickly look something up, it’s just so easy.
Boyfriend tried to explain that this is because it doesn’t get clogged up with software, that everything is stored on a cloud, but to be honest I still struggle with the idea of the internet, and where it’s all kept, so the thought of my Google Chromebook hovering in the sky above me was all a bit much. “But what if it rains,” asks my friend Ella, aka Purplemum, “and your stuff falls down into someone else’s computer?”
(I suspect these sort of comments make us exactly the kind of simpletons who need something as easy to use as the Chromebook).
It’s light too. I took it out to writing group with me this week and it was just like casually popping a small pad of paper in my bag. The battery life is amazing – two hours into writing group, when my laptop would be on its last legs, and the Chromebook still 83% battery – 6 hours and 27 minutes – left to go.
Boyfriend likes it because “it just does stuff without Windows cacking it all up.” In fact he likes it a lot. “I’m going to try and secretly make it mine,” he told me yesterday. Not if anyone else in the family has any say in it he won’t.
Bee was rather taken with the Harmony app – basically paint for fancypants. She created this lovely headed notepaper for when she launches her bee-spoke design business:
I think you’ll agree it’s a masterpiece.
Belle, I discovered five minutes ago as I searched for Bee’s artwork, has been using our Google Chromebook sneakily before school to take weird pictures of herself. I found a series of 14 pictures, taken between 8.13am and 8.17am, when I suspect I may have been in the shower. These are my favourites:
Boyfriend of course uses it mainly for watching really fast, noisy cars on YouTube.
Now at the moment we are all logging on with my Google account, which does make me wonder what exactly my Google friends will be thinking of me. “They’ll all be wondering why you are looking at videos showing you how to take the exhaust off a Saab,” says Boyfriend. (He actually said something far more complicated than that, but I can’t remember exactly what. I think it had the word ‘sump’ in it.)
A few nights ago Bee was playing some sort of shopping mall game. “Why have Britmums come in to comment on your outfit?” she asked me. You can see my problem. I don’t want the world to think I’m some kind of sump obsessed childlike gamer with a penchant for turning her own face inside out. This problem is just laziness though – I need to get us all set up so we can log on with our own accounts.
My favourite app so far is the Hootsuite plug-in. I use Hootsuite a lot, by which I mean all the time in a slightly obsessive way. The Hootsuite plug-in sits on my Chrome toolbar and means I can share content to any of my twitter accounts from anywhere. It really is fantastic. You simply poke the owl, and he* pulls out a comment and a link for you. Easy peasy. (And yes, that is a dancing Stitch on my wallpaper):
All these things are of course only simple little tools – the Google Chromebook has lots more up its sleeve that I’ve yet to get to grips with. This week I used it to ‘hangout’ with Britmums and Cherry Healey. My next task is to switch my laptop to using Chrome and then sync everything. Fancy.
One of the main publicised drawbacks about the Google Chromebook is the fact that so much of what you do relies on an internet connection but to be honest, how much of your time is spent somewhere with no Wifi?? Plus, there are actually a lot of features than you can use offline. There’s an offline Gmail app so you can compose and read emails, and Google docs and photo files can be edited offline too – all changes automatically updating the next time you’re connected. (You do need to set this up beforehand, so don’t set off on a long train journey and then get annoyed. Just saying.) The Chrome Web Store has a whole section of tools and games that work offline, so you should find plenty to keep you busy even if you’re away from the Wifi.
All in all, I can safely say that everyone in our house loves our new Samsung Chromebook.
Do you have one? What do you think? What would be your top tips for helping me get the most out of it?
*It’s definitely a he