Following her very thorough Blackberry Curve 9320 review, I invited Bee back to talk about the joys of voucher codes…

In my house we are big on voucher codes.

I can’t go anywhere without someone saying “don’t forget to take this 2 for 1 offer/money off voucher/loyalty card with you”. In fact one of the highlights for the family this weekend (surprisingly I didn’t attend) was spending some vouchers in 99p Stores. They came back with all sorts of random things, the most obscure being the gift they got for me, which was a pack of 6 little tubs of tooth picks. I guess they could always be used as mini sticks for mini marshmallows around a Bunsen burner.

"mini marshmallows"

Anyway, this got me thinking, I could use voucher codes to my advantage, with Christmas just around the corner. Seventeen is an awkward age to be when it comes to buying Christmas presents, as people assume you are old enough to buy your own gifts, but you also don’t have as much disposable income as adults.

Also, truth be told, you’re just not as tuned in with the rest of your family as they are, meaning you’re never sure what they would actually like and what would be a waste of the £10 you had scraped together to get them a token present. So I thought going onto a voucher code website could kill two birds with one stone – (not literally. I would never throw a rock at a bird. I’m a vegetarian. And I don’t want an ASBO) – I could get some inspiration for good gift ideas and hopefully save some money too.

I had a browse through the discount vouchers at netvouchercodes.co.uk to see what I could find. Clicking onto the “popular vouchers” tab I found a code for £20 off when you spend £55 on Crocs. I didn’t think I’d be downloading that one. I may not have a passion for fashion but I do know where to draw the line.

Another awkward voucher I found was “20% off the Diamond Plus Service using this Divorce Online Voucher Code.” I don’t think I’d be invited to my Dad’s house for Christmas dinner again if I got him this. (Plus I wouldn’t want him to get divorced obviously).

One suitable voucher code did catch my eye though – “£20 off when you spend £100 or more on Premium Beauty using this Boots Discount Code.” Well there you go, I can get £100 worth of fancy moisturiser in a box for £80. That’s half of my Christmas list done. I didn’t even have to leave the comfort of my kitchen table; I could just use the Boots discount voucher, go straight to their website and order online!

Now that’s what I call Christmas shopping.

 

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There’s less than a week to go until Halloween. Are you feeling spooky yet?

To get her in the mood, Belle has been reading some scary Halloween stories this week from Miles Kelly. They are aimed at 6-9 year olds, beautifully illustrated and each book includes four or five individual stories. They include a mixture of classic stories with a creepy twist, plus lots of lesser known tales that have been imaginatively retold for children.

"Halloween stories"

To win your own set of three books, which includes The Wicked Witch of the West, Jack the Giant Killer and The Little Mermaid, simply leave a comment on this post, telling me what your favourite book was as a child.

A winner will be chosen on 31st October.

P.S. Don’t forget to enter my competition to win a pair of Cheekyshoes too!

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Tuna and mushy peas on rice cakes.

I know, sounds delicious right?

I was feeling a bit uninspired by the thought of another ham sandwich, so had a rummage through the cupboards instead and found a can of tuna from the Reel Fish company:

Now I’ve not eaten much tuna lately since it started becoming a bit on the pricey side, so when you do buy tuna, you want to buy something Proper and Good don’t you? The Reel Fish company catch all their tuna one by one, using an actual pole and line, so nothing else gets caught that shouldn’t be. Plus, it’s really delicious.

I also found a tin of mushy peas, a bargain at only 9p from Aldi, and half a pack of slightly squidgy rice cakes that needed using up.

And then my delicious recipe came to me, like a bolt of lightning!

I like tuna, but I find it a bit dry on its own. Mayonnaise is yummy, but has about a million calories. Mushy peas on the other hand – all the moistness of mayo without the fat! Plus you get a bit of pea goodness too. Foolproof. I mixed them up together, and piled my mixture on top of my rice cake.

Tada!

"Tuna and mushy pea rice cakes"

Not only was it very tasty, but one of these works out at less than 100 calories and is really filling. Nigella eat your heart out.

If you have any other ideas for interesting ways to use a can of tuna, do let me know…

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“Hello Jo,

I’m a Canadian musician, living in Mexico, married to a Bristol man, mother of two and about to release my 5th independent album.”

Now that’s a cracking start to an email isn’t it? If someone sent that to you you’d definitely read on. I know I did.

The email was from Camille Miller, asking me to have a listen to a track from her new EP called ‘Tiniest of Hearts’, written while Camille was pregnant with her first child, Hannah. Now I don’t know about you, but I find it pretty hard to identify with most modern music. You’ll not often find me ‘in the club with a bottle of bub’ or anything like that, and I find it difficult to get my head round exactly why Rhianna would love the way somebody hurts her and lies to her. That’s not a thing is it? Come on girl, pull yourself together.

Pregnancy and parenthood though, that’s something I know about. Why are there not more songs about that? Sure, the day-to-day logistics of it might not be terribly glamorous, but actually becoming and being a parent is a very powerful, emotional thing.

Camille is going to be in the UK over Christmas and the New Year doing some shows, so why not have a listen to Tiniest of Hearts, and maybe check out her website for show dates, buy an album, or just leave some sort of lovely comment telling her how much you like the song.*

 
*Only if you do obviously. I’m not asking you to lie. If you don’t like it though, probably best just to keep quiet.

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It’s Friday! Hoorah! I think we all deserve a bit of a treat don’t you? Today then I’m going to show you how to make a quick and easy chocolate mousse. (That’s the theory anyway).

Although I am no Nigella in the kitchen, Belle is really keen on baking, so I was happy to sign up for the Anchor cooking challenge. We were given vouchers for cream, butter and squirty cream, and keen to rise to the fat-laden challenge I looked for a recipe that involved all three!

I found this easy chocolate mousse recipe in Nigella Express. So, here’s what you need:

  • 150 grams mini marshmallows. (We could only find normal size marshmallows so we just chopped them up a bit.)
  • 50 grams butter (soft)
  • 250 grams dark chocolate (minimum 70% cocoa solids) chopped into small pieces. (We used Dairy Milk as it was on offer in Sainsbury’s – three bars for a pound. Bargain!)
  • 60 ml water (hot)
  • 284 ml double cream
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • Squirty cream and chocolate shavings for decoration. (We added this bit ourselves. Nigella doesn’t make a lot of use of squirty cream in her recipes as a rule.)

Method

  • Put the marshmallows, butter, chocolate and water in a heavy-based saucepan. Pop any leftovers in your mouth for safe keeping.

"Chocolate mousse"

"Chocolate mousse"

  • Put the saucepan on the hob, over heat, though keep it fairly gentle, to melt the contents, stirring every now and again. Remove from the heat.

"Chocolate mousse"

  • Meanwhile, whip the cream with the vanilla extract until thick, and then fold into the cooling chocolate mixture until you have a smooth, cohesive mixture.

"Chocolate mousse"

This is where it all started to go wrong. When Nigella says ‘remove from heat’, what I think she really means is ‘leave to cool for ages’. We didn’t do this. When we added our cream to our chocolate mixture, the cream just melted. It became less a mousse and more of a drink. Still we persevered, hoping that if they spent a bit of time in the fridge they might mousse up a little bit.

  • Pour or scrape into 4 glasses or ramekins, about 175ml each in capacity, or 6 smaller (125ml) ones, and chill until you want to eat. Instead of ramekins, we used our new Anchor silicone cup cake moulds, which I think makes them look very pretty indeed. However, this amount of mixture was more than enough to fill all 12 cup cake moulds, so Nigella must be serving big portions.

"Chocolate mousse"

"Chocolate mousse"

We popped them in the fridge and hoped for the best…

*an hour later*

…Success! Sort of. Our chocolate mousses (or should that be chocolate mice?) were definitely a lot firmer, so much so that Belle could finish them off with a squirt of Anchor. I don’t think you could call them mousse though. They were fairly thick and sticky. If I was a chain pub I would probably call them ‘Indulgent chocolate pots’ and charge £4.95 for them.

"Chocolate mousse"

Warning: I have done a rough calculation and there is approximately one million calories per serving.

This is a sponsored post – I’m working with Anchor to promote their brand new rewards club. Pay them a visit now to find out how you can get some of their kitchenware as well as prizes.

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When Lands End offered to send me a dress from their autumn/winter collection to jazz up the school run, I wasn’t sure at first whether or not I should be offended. You know how sometimes friends will look at you and smile in a slightly pitying way and offer to lend you a hairbrush or some make-up?

No?

That could just be me then.

I decided to assume though that they were approaching me not because I need the help, but because I am an incredibly stylish woman, and the perfect person to act as an aspirational fashion figure for all the other mums.

*snort*

A girl can dream.

I chose this dress, because I love bright, bold colours, and because it had a whole section on ‘slimming details’ and everyone loves a flattering empire waistline and a ‘fluid ponte knit that drapes softly over your curves’:

"Lands End red dress"

Me admiring my new dress

When it arrived, I was really impressed with the weight and the quality of the fabric, and it really did feel like it draped softly over my curves. I even got a surprised ‘it looks quite nice actually’ from Boyfriend, which is a big compliment.

The one thing I wasn’t sure about though was the colour, as it looked much pinker on the website than it did in the flesh. This could just be me though. I have a grey bag that everyone else swears is green, so I’m possibly not the best judge.

"Lands End dress"

Bee goes for a ‘look thoughtfully into the distance Mummy’ shot.

What I love about this dress though is that it’s so versatile – you can wear it really casually with some flip-flops and a ponytail, or dress it right up with a nice belt, heels and some fancy jewellery.

"Lands End dress"

Add a belt and some heels and tada!

And I do often find myself having to go straight from a day out on the beach to a jazzy cocktail party. OK, not often maybe, but if I did have to do that, I would certainly be well prepared now.

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I don’t often buy new shoes. To be honest I hate shopping for shoes. It’s a good job that no one has (as yet) offered me a part in a Sex And The City remake, because I really would suck at it. I spend most of my time in a pair of black flats from Clarks, that Bee calls my ‘Topsy shoes’ as she reckons they would look good on Topsy of ‘Topsy and Tim’ fame. I think Topsy is about four years old.

I also have very unsexy wide feet, with comedy lightbulb toes, so it’s hard to find shoes that are comfy. My feet are really not my best feature.

When I do get a new pair of shoes then, it is a big deal and I have to genuinely love them. My new shoes are red and beautiful and make me feel happy. My family agrees that they are ‘very me’, which I think is an insult, but I’m trying to ignore that. They are by Clarks, but I got mine through Zalando. Before I even put them on I loved them. Before they even arrived I loved them.

Watch this short clip and imagine this is me talking about my shoes:

 

Now you get the idea. Aren’t they lovely though?

"red clarks shoes"

 

And here they are on the end of my legs. I think they look very happy.

"my new shoes"

 

They are very me and I like that.

*smiles and skips away like fictional four-year-old character*

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I want you just to take a minute.

Close your eyes and picture this scene. (Except don’t close your eyes, because then you won’t be able to read.)

You’re lying face down in a warm and sweet-smelling room. The children are miles away (in safe hands, not just abandoned at a motorway service station), and you’ve spent the day relaxing, reading your favourite book, taking the odd dip in the hydrotherapy pool and being brought cups of tea. Later on you’ll be enjoying a wonderful meal, and right now you are being massaged by a man with the looks of David Beckham, the wit of Stephen Fry and the credit card limit of Bill Gates.

All this could be yours.*

"win a spa break"If you’re in desperate need of a time out, then you need to pop along right now and enter the Four Pillars Hotels competition to win a weekend spa break for two – a whole two days and two nights of pampering, including dinner, treatments and, in my opinion the best bit of staying in a hotel – breakfast. I don’t know what it is about the breakfast, but somehow it feels really special. I think it’s the toast racks and the tiny jars of jam.

Enter now for your chance to indulge in the delights of miniature jams. And the spa obviously. Don’t forget that.

*Apart from the quality of the masseur. I absolutely cannot promise that.

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Bee is a bit of a dab hand in the kitchen when she wants to be, and after giving her recipe books as Christmas and birthday presents for the last two or three years, she has recently finally got the hint and started making me some cakes.

“Hooray!” I cheered.

“Is that why you’ve been buying me cake books all this time?” she asks, eyeing me suspiciously.

Well dur.

For ages now I’ve been wanting her to try out the giant silicone beehive cake mould we got from Betterware. I thought it would be cute, a Bee baking bees, so this week she gave it a go.

This is the mould, and this is what you’re aiming for in the end:

"beehive cake mould"

"beehive cake"

She used this recipe, taken from the Betterware blog, created especially for the mould:

You will need

  • 170g Clear Honey
  • 140g Unsalted Butter
  • 85g Light Muscovado Sugar
  • 2 Medium eggs
  • 200g Self Raising Flour
  • Bee Hive Silicone Mould

Inside the cake

  • 55g Icing Sugar
  • 1 tablespoon Clear Honey
  • Hot Water

To decorate

  • 75g Icing Sugar
  • Water


Here’s what you do

  1. First up pre heat the oven to 180c/350f/Gas 3
  2. Grease the inside of your mould lightly with butter or cake release. Make sure you grease every crease and fold to ensure your cake is easily removed once baked. This is a really crucial bit, so I stood and watched over Bee’s shoulder as she greased, saying really unhelpful and annoying things like ‘make sure you grease everywhere really well’.
  3. Add the honey, muscovado sugar, butter and a tablespoon of water into a large pan. Gently heat until the mixture is melted
  4. Beat eggs and sieve flour Everything seemed to be going well at this point, so I retired to the lounge for a little sit down.
  5. Remove from the heat and mix in the eggs and flour
  6. Spoon mixture evenly into both sides of the mould and bake for 40 to 45 minutes. Your cake should be springy to touch. Poke a sharp knife through the cake, if it comes out clean your cake is ready. I’d been sitting down for some time, and was getting concerned that the spooning stage was lasting quite a long time. I went into the kitchen, where I found Bee looking grumpy. “It’s rubbish,” she said, “you can’t put it in the oven because it just flops all over the place.” I gave her one of the looks I always mean to be sympathetic but which tend to come out as patronising, got out a baking tray to put it on, and we were back on track.
  7. Leave to cool on a wire rack before gently removing the cake from the mould

It was at the ‘bake for 40-45mins’ bit that things went a bit wrong. 40 -45mins is a long time, and after 30 minutes, our beehive was already blackening around the edges. Whether it was user or designer error I don’t know, but the mould had bent out of shape, weighed down with cake mixture, meaning it didn’t rise evenly. I think we’d need to practise this a bit.

"beehive in the mould"

On the plus side,  the pattern looked really good when you turned it out, but the way it had risen just wasn’t conducive to constructing a beehive. We tried trimming it, to create flat surfaces that we could stick together, but the amount we had to trim meant we were really just left with a 2D drawing of a beehive.

"beehive cake"

I asked Bee to sum up her beehive baking experience, and here’s what she said:

Pros

  • Recipe was easy to do
  • Mould was easy to grease
  • Pattern came out nicely

Cons

  • Mould was a bit flimsy
  • Rose weirdly
  • Wasn’t the tastiest cake ever
  • Couldn’t stick together
  • Got annoyed with it a lot

So there you go, that sums it up pretty nicely I think.

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It’s a good question isn’t it? Do stain removers really work? Well, read on for my Oxi-Action Powder review and find out…

In the Slummy single mummy guide to housework, stain removal does not feature highly. I’m so busy throwing crumbs behind the sofa and hiding dishes in cupboards that I just don’t have the time for soaking my whites. I don’t even separate the whites in my washing. Come on.

I’ve always had this idea that stain removers, along with other household things like carpet cleaners and weed killers, don’t actually work – they’re just one of those myths, like anti-wrinkle creams. We know they can’t ever do what they say on the tin, but we really want them to, so we buy them anyway.

That was before though. Before Vanish asked me to actually try their stain removers, rather than just scoff at them in the supermarket. It has been quite a revelation. They’re not foolproof, but this is my honest account of how I’ve got on…

Vanish reviewFirst I tried it out on our white towels, which normally end up pretty grimy, covered in mascara and Dove’s ‘gradual self-tanner’, (which I discovered just makes you all smeary and then comes straight off on your towel). For some reason, my towel had also acquired some strange blue stains in patches all over it, that looked like Belle might have secretly used it to clean up an ink spillage.

With a scoop of Oxi-Action Powder in the wash, they came out lovely and white, although to be fair, my mascara usually does anyway, as it’s pretty cheap and not waterproof. Still, the mystery blue stains came out too, which was pretty impressive.

Next, a real test. I’ve got this one jumper that I’ve had for years. For the last six months though it has been annoying me – every time I put it on, I remember that it has a faint spaghetti Bolognese stain right in the middle on the front. Every time I go to wear it, I end up putting it straight back in the washing basket, washing it, drying it, hanging it back up, and the whole process starts again. I was pretty excited then to think it might actually disappear. And do you know what? With a bit of Vanish gel on it for ten minutes before the wash, it did! As if by magic! Poof! Nice.

Vanish reviewThen Boyfriend tried it out on his dress shirt, which, like me and my jumper, he keeps putting on and forgetting has stains on it. This he soaked beforehand, in warm water with a scoop of the Oxi-Action Powder and it came out lovely sparkly white.

In the process of soaking, we also discovered that Vanish is excellent for getting rid of stains in white ceramic sinks. Seriously, our kitchen sink has never looked so clean. Top tip there for you.

The one thing it didn’t manage to get rid of was blood stains. Belle had a little middle-of-the-night nose bleed, and although we tried the next morning rubbing Vanish gel in pre-wash, and then using it in the machine too, it wouldn’t shift it. In a way though, I find this sort of comforting. You wouldn’t want a murder scene to be rendered spotless with a quick wipe round with the Vanish would you?

And of course if you really can’t get rid of a stain then you can always cover it! Custom patches are a godsend here – a way to cover up stains and decorate your clothes at the same time.

Do you have a Vanish review you’d like to share? Do you think stain removers work?

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What can you get nowadays for 99p?

You’re probably thinking ‘not much’ – penny sweets are about ten pence each nowadays, and what happened to Mars Bars being 25p eh? When did that stop? When did I become old??

If inflation is making you feel your age, you need a trip to the 99p Stores.*

Now reviewing the shopping experience at 99p Stores may not seem like the most glamorous of assignments, but bloody hell, we certainly got a lot for our money. We were given £50 to spend, but as there were only baskets, not forklift trucks, we quite literally couldn’t spend it all at once. We physically couldn’t carry fifty quid’s worth of cereal.

We did manage to spend £29.70 in our first trip, and this is what we got:

"99p Stores"

Cor blimey, what a lot of shopping.

If you’ve never been to a 99p Stores before, you might be surprised to see that they actually sell a lot of branded items – food in particular. We eat a lot of cereal in our house, but normally I’m too tight to buy brand names, so we stocked up on lots of horribly over sweet breakfast items, at bargain prices. It really is a lot cheaper than you could buy in the supermarket, and the choice is quite amazing. I picked up three totally random things I have been meaning to get for a while – a pair of flip-flops, some more cord for our strimmer, and a book light. And each less than a pound! Bizarre.

I was shopping specifically though with a small picnic in mind, as Belle and I were meeting friends today at the Bristol Balloon Fiesta. I picked up some sandwich spread, which was a bit of a blast from the past, drinks, dip, fruit bars, mini-cookies, and some intriguing looking ‘hummus chips’ – crisps made with chick pea flour. That’s the lovely thing about 99p Stores – yes, they have the brands, but they also have some really unusual things you just wouldn’t see anywhere else in your average UK shopping centre.

"99p stores picnic"

Om nom nom

I worked out that this little feast came to less than four pounds, which was about the price of a Mr Whippy at the fiesta.

The staff were helpful, the choice was great, and we even picked up a One Direction stationery set for Bee.** When I go back to spend the rest of my vouchers, I’ll definitely be taking Boyfriend, so he can stock up on pickles and cleaning products – two of his favourite things. We might just get some more of those hummus chips too…***

*This works quite literally too, as they do a lot of skin care products.

**Don’t tell her. It’s a surprise.

***Brushes crumbs away guiltily.

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I’ve been to quite a few festivals in my time, (any excuse not to wash for a few days), but I’ve never seen anything like the fireworks and animation display that celebrated the end of Camp Bestival 2012.

The weekend had been fantastic already, with surprise treats such as Chic – who’d have thought they wrote so many songs?? – and more predictably incredible entertainment in the form of Rolf Harris, but who’d have thought that something so amazing was going to be tucked away last thing on Sunday, long after I’ve normally given up and dragged the kids home?

The afternoon had been warm and relaxed. I’d spent a happy hour lying on the floor of the spoken word tent, thinking about how much more I liked Russell Kane as an author than a comedian, and then I’d teamed up with some strangers for a music quiz. A quick pint of pear cider and a last-minute entry into Ecover’s ‘Feel Good Giveaway’* on my way to meet Boyfriend, and after a special moment sharing our dislike of the Happy Mondays, we were ready for some firework fun.

This video, courtesy of BrightonArt, is about fifteen minutes long, but it is well worth the watch. Set against the already stunning backdrop of Lulworth Castle, the combination of fireworks and animation was just breathtaking and made for a really spectacular end to a wonderful weekend.

 

*I could win £2,000 of family clothes from Boden! Nice. Fingers crossed I get lucky, so I can fit right in with all the yummy mummies at Camp Bestival next year.

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