You might think that the weekend just before a big house move would be a BAD weekend to go away, but a couple of days at Bluestone in Wales, away from boxes and bubble wrap, turned out to be just what we needed to recharge our batteries.

I mean come on, who could fail to feel reenergised looking out at this beautiful view?

Bluestone Wales review

Bluestone Wales review

I’ve not done any editing at all to those photos – I wanted you to see how lovely the light was in the evening as the sun started to go down.

It helped that we were staying in one of the upside down lodges, so the bedrooms were on the ground floor and the open plan kitchen and living room space was on the first floor, taking advantage of the view of the lake.

It wasn’t our first trip to Bluestone – we visited a couple of years ago around Christmas time when I made Belle dress up as an elf – but we were keen to come back again in warmer weather to try some of the outdoor activities. Bluestone is set up in a similar way to a CentreParcs style resort, but I actually prefer it to CentreParcs as it’s a lot smaller and easier to get about. The resort centres around a ‘village’, which includes pubs, restaurants, a cafe, shop and spa, plus there are outlying areas for activities. Everything is within easy walking distance although you can hire golf buggies for the duration of your stay if you want to. (Belle was DESPERATE to do this, but they were a bit on the pricey side I felt.) View Post

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Looking for flexible shelving? Read my Tylko review!

I want to introduce you to what may well be my very favourite thing in my new house – my shelves from Tylko:

Tylko review felxible shelving

Well hello there!

Let’s start at the beginning though. How exactly did I create this masterpiece of shelving?? Easy peasy actually. I’ll show you.

First up, you have to go to the Tylko website, then click under the ‘shelves’ menu to find the kind of shelving you need. They have split it into categories to help get you started, like bookshelves and sideboards, but essentially they all do the same thing as everything is totally customisable.

Pop in the dimensions of your space, then play around to get the design you want: View Post

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A little while ago Belle and I went for a weekend in Newquay, Cornwall. From the beach we could see a large building out on the headland.

Headland Hotel Cornwall

Can you see it?

‘What’s that do you think?’ Belle asked at the time.

‘I don’t know,’ I said, ‘but it looks a little bit creepy doesn’t it? Like it could be an abandoned asylum, staring out to sea.’

Turns it out wasn’t an abandoned asylum at all. It was The Headland Hotel, as we discovered when we pulled into the car park in front of what, in fairness, does have a very grand, traditional feel to it. (I did ask and although it was purpose built as a hotel, it was used as a hospital during World War II, so perhaps I just sensed the ghosts of patients past.)

Inside was very far from hospital chic. Instead it had a very classical, opulent hotel feel. Proper chintz, but in a good way, if you know what I mean. Big comfy sofas and swooshes of curtain, framing gorgeous sea views from what felt like every window.

Headland Hotel Cornwall View Post

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I currently have three mobile phone contracts.

EE home broadband

From the amount I spend on phones every month you might imagine I have some kind of secret, shady double life, but I don’t, I just have two children.

All three of my phone contracts are with EE, but even though that should probably make me a bit of an EE expert, I’d never considered EE for my home broadband before. I actually didn’t even know they did home broadband.

Sorry about that EE. My bad.

It’s stupid of me really, as one of the perks of EE broadband is that you get an extra 5GB of data every month on your EE pay monthly mobile data allowance, which is worth £10 a month. I do often go over my data allowance, especially if I’m out of the office a lot, so this would be very handy for me.

That’s reason number one for switching to EE home broadband.

So what else? View Post

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A month or so ago Fiancé had labyrinthitis. It’s that horrid thing that makes you feel like you’re on board a ship in the middle of a terrible storm, and you’re meant to stay lying down for pretty much all of the time until it passes.

Fiancé is a boy though, so he thought he had special spider powers that meant he could keep getting up and doing things like hanging out washing.

He couldn’t, which he proved when he actually did try to hang some washing out, and fainted, crushing our indoor clothes airer in the process. For a little while we propped it up against the coffee table, managing to make do with just three legs, and then I got an email from Brabantia asking if I wanted a clothes airer to help promote their #LoveNature campaign and all was well.

What is the Brabantia #LoveNature campaign?

The Brabantia #LoveNature campaign is a collaboration with WeForest, where for every wallfix, rotary dryer or drying rack sold, Brabantia plants a tree in Africa’s Great Green Wall.

Brabantia has planted a whopping 800,000 trees so far with WeForest and they want to make it to a million.

If, like me, you hadn’t heard of the Great Green Wall, then you need to have a watch of this video. It’s essentially a hugely ambitious and symbolic project with the aim of building a wall of trees the entire width of Africa. It’s a pretty incredible thing.

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I had a bit of an embarrassing moment about 12 years ago when a man came to the door of my house at about 1am, thinking I was a prostitute.

His English wasn’t good, so there was some confusion while he tried to invite himself in and I wondered what on earth was going on.

‘For sex?’ he kept saying, much to my utter bemusement.

‘What?’ I replied, unhelpfully.

‘I come in for sex?’ he kept repeating.

It was all a bit awkward.

Finally he pointed up to Bee’s bedroom window, where I could see that she had left her light on. She was about nine years old and had bought this red light bulb from B&Q for some reason, and had gone to sleep with it on. We lived in a family terraced house in a nice part of a small Somerset town, off the main road, but apparently the logical conclusion to jump to was that I was running a brothel.

So that was a lesson learnt for everyone.

Technology has come a long way since my light bulb/sex worker incident, so I wasn’t deterred when TP-Link got in touch to see if I fancied trying some of their smart Wi-Fi LED bulbs.

Yeah yeah, I know what you’re thinking: light bulbs, that’s hardly the sexiest of topics is it? Well you’re wrong, because these bulbs are AWESOME.

The first one we tried was the smart Wi-Fi LED bulb with colour changing hue.

TP-Link smart bulb colour changing

I’m not sure how it works exactly – I think it’s actual magic – but all you have to do is pop it into your light socket, as you would a normal bulb, follow the instructions to connect it to an app on your phone and TADA! View Post

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I may be 40 next year (gah!), with two pretty much grown up children, (double gah!), but there are a few things that I still don’t quite seem to have got to grips with when it comes to adulting.

My knife collection is one of these things. (As in kitchen knives, nothing suspect.)

For about the last twenty years I have had one Good Knife. It was in a box full of random kitchen junk that I bought at an auction for about two pounds. It’s a large serrated knife with a wooden handle and it has seen me through some tough times. It works as my bread knife, my… er… actually I’m not sure of any of the other knife names to be honest.

Suffice to say that for a long time that knife has met all of my chopping needs.

And then there comes a day, (around the time that you start the process of buying your first home and decide you want more for yourself), when you realise that that one knife is HOLDING YOU BACK. That knife is why you still feel like you’re waiting to decide what you want to be when you grow up. That knife is why you don’t have enough in your pension fund, or a car with working windows. Damn it. If only you had decent knives, you’d be a real grown up and accomplish real grown up things.

Well.

Check me out NOW with my Robert Welch Signature Compact Knife Block.

Robert Welch knife set

Now I’ve got no excuse have I?

I think knives are once of those things that you don’t realise are missing from your life until you have proper good ones. You just get by, crucifying chicken breasts as best you can and avoiding buying swedes or watermelon because you know that cutting them up will be just TOO MUCH.

Not any more! View Post

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Have you ever wondered what it would be like to have a butler?

I’m not talking about a regular old butler who just does as he’s told, I’m thinking more like a Jeeves style butler, who knows what you want before you even know yourself.

You know the sort of thing I mean right? You’re Bertie Wooster, you wake up with a hangover, having been at the club for dinner the night before, and you lie there wondering how on earth to move. Then Jeeves is suddenly at your side with a home made hangover cure and before you can say ‘bacon’ he’s rustled you up eggs benedict.

That’s what it’s like driving the Hyundai i30.

Loads of things can be set to auto for a start – auto lights, auto windscreen wipers, auto hold on the brake – so you find yourself in the drizzle, starting to think ‘I should probably put the windscre…’ and BOOM! They’re on already. The car has done it.

It’s the same with the safety features.

‘I don’t think Madam really DOES want to overtake just now,’ the car says, except it doesn’t, it just beeps at you if you indicate when there is something in your blind spot, but you know that’s what it’s thinking.

The handling is beautiful, and it feels very and light to drive. Visibility is decent, and the space is just right for a small family. We’ve actually owned an i30 before and really enjoyed it. It’s not flashy, it’s not trying to be anything it isn’t, it’s just EASY. And for it’s price, it comes with a lot of impressive functionality. It’s definitely great value.

Have a watch of the video we made below and find out more about all of the cool Hyundai i30 features. You can also read this post about our weekend in the woods with the Hyundai i30.

And Jeeves? Make mine a gin and tonic.

We test drove the Hyundai i30  for two weeks for the purposes of this review. All opinions are my own. 

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This post is in partnership with Universal Pictures Home Entertainment

review Sing movie

It’s here! Quite possibly my favourite film of 2017 so far, SING is now out on DVD and Blu-ray, just in time for half term.

What’s almost more important though for a family film night that’s the film? Snacks of course!

How to make Piggy Power Popcorn

Belle is quite set in her ways and has a few favourite foods that she’d eat all of the time if you let her.

  1. Delivered pizza
  2. Normal pizza
  3. Bacon
  4. Chocolate chip brioche
  5. Popcorn

I decided to make some themed film night snacks that incorporated some of her favourites. Chocolate chip brioche pizza sounded a bit iffy, so I went with bacon flavour popcorn, or as I like to call it, Piggy Power Popcorn! Sing stars a rather flamboyant pig named Gunter, who is all about the piggy power. View Post

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Ooer. That sounds a bit creepy doesn’t it?

We weren’t up to anything suspect, I promise, we were just test driving the Hyundai i30. (Although I will say that if you DID want to transport bodies, the Hyundai i30 has excellent boot space.) We wanted to give it a proper test in a good variety of conditions, so we took it down the M5 until the motorway ran out and then drove our way down to stay at a Forest Holidays place in Cornwall.

It was PROPER RAINY that weekend, but I didn’t mind because I really like being in the forest in the rain. Everything smells so lovely and fresh when it rains in the woods, plus our lodge had a hot tub, and there is something very decadent indeed about being outside in the cold, with your whole body in the warm water, sipping a glass of cold white wine.

Belle had really enjoyed the drive down as Fiancé was coming down to meet us from London on the train, so she got to sit in the front. In the Hyundai i30 this meant two things for her.

  1. She got to plug her phone in to the Apple Play thing and make me listen to songs sung (badly) from the girls from Dance Moms.
  2. Every five minutes or so she could casually switch on my heated seat and wait for me to worry that I had wet myself as I felt the spreading warmth.

Both of which she enjoyed thoroughly.

Hyundai i30 review

Looks like butter wouldn’t melt doesn’t she?

Being in the Hyundai i30 made it a lovely drive for me too, especially as I’m used to driving an ancient, mouldy smelling Seat that has done over 110,000 miles and has a driver window wedged closed with cardboard. I could say that anything would seem good by comparison, but I am a genuine fan of the Hyundai i30. In fact, I used to drive one, and so I speak with two years’ experience. View Post

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This post is in partnership with Universal Pictures Home Entertainment

Did you watch SING when it was on at the cinema? Belle and I did. We’d been seeing the trailers for absolutely months and really looking forward to it. It’s out in the UK on DVD and Blu-ray next week – May 22nd – so this is to get you EXCITED!

In case you’ve not seen it, this will get you in the mood:

Ahhh! That was nice wasn’t it? That made me all smiley.

I love a proper ‘if you just want it hard enough, you can make your dreams come true’ type of film. Especially went it involves a German pig in a red leotard.

“I’m warning you, this stage is about to EXPLODE with major piggy power.” View Post

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I have to confess that I would normally think of myself as more of a biscuit than a cake person. I could quite happily munch my way through a whole packet of cookies, but cake… I’m not so sure.

I make an exception though for My Kipling.

(The cakes, not the actual man. Is he an actual man even?*)

Mr Kipling gluten free cakes

Mr Kipling cakes are different. With a Mr Kipling cake you never have to worry about them being too dry, or too sweet, or anything like that, because they are always PERFECT. I think this is the issue with cake normally for me – it’s a big investment calorie wise in something that can be unpredictable, and there’s nothing worse than chomping your way through a piece of yukky, dry cake, knowing that the calorie-enjoyment ratio has FAILED.

Sure, you can try to make yourself feel better about the wasted calories in some way – you were at a business meeting, or standing up, or something else that means it doesn’t count – but it doesn’t help. You need a cake you can rely on.

Mr Kipling cakes then = GOOD. (Exceedingly good, some might say.) View Post

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