Home Archives

Tag Archives | home

(Not So) Extreme Make over: Home Edition

By Mum's the Word on May 17, 2013 in Home

Now that we’ve lived in this house for three years, our landlord has become a little more easy-going about letting us add our own touches to the place. We’re planning feature walls in both bedrooms, pink for Sausage and a gorgeous sage-green for Husband and I. The one hurdle that we’ve faced is buying curtains or blinds for the rooms. Both rooms have huge windows, with Sausage’s being the most awkward, her bay window measuring about 11 feet wide!

Just recently we’ve discovered these Perfect Fit blinds from Web-Blinds, which fit inside the frames of UPVC windows. They don’y have a pull string, which makes them perfect for a child’s room as, like many parents, I would seriously worry about the safety risks associated with conventional blinds. They come in a gorgeous range of colours too, so Sausage won’t need to sacrifice the girly theme that she’s got going on with just about every shade of pink possible somewhere in her room!

Another thing we’d love is laminate flooring. I’ve mentioned on more than one occasion on this blog that living in a house with a beige carpet when you have an almost 5 year old and a dog is not idea – I’m not sure I even remember what this carpet is supposed to look like anymore, such is the extent of the swirls of mud/Ribena/crayon stains that are dotted about and despite our valiant efforts to clean it last year, I think we need to admit that our pile has had the guts knocked out of it!

This Butter Oak laminate flooring is absolutely stunning and would look so fab in our lounge, especially if we were to scatter a couple of coordinating rugs around. It would be fabulously easy to clean and would definitely be a lot more resilient than our carpet, which is now so flimsy that the Dyson sometimes pulls whole lines of thread out of it!

I think that makes me pretty easy to please – a lick of paint, some blinds and a nice floor and I’d be a very contented blogger!

Comments { 1 }

Home Appliances from K&Co.

By Mum's the Word on May 10, 2013 in Home

I often sit here and think about what I’d buy if money and space were no object and I have to admit, a lot of the time I mentally salivate over the appliances that I’d have in my home.

What can I say people? I dream big.

One of the first things that I’d buy if I had the space would be a dishwasher. I’m not exactly domesticity’s poster girl and the thing I can’t stand the most is washing up. This black Beko one would do nicely as it would match my other appliances:

Of course, if I have a nice dishwasher, I’d have some gorgeous Amefa cutlery to wash in it, too! This tumble dryer from Hotpoint would be second on my list as I currently don’t own a tumble (space issues again) and I spend a worrying amount of time between the months of September and April rotating things on radiators and clothes horses and then wiping the condensation off of my walls!

Obviously, after all of that dishwasher loading and towel folding, I’d want to treat myself to a nice cup of coffee, so I’d upgrade my current Tassimo machine for this shiny new one and make myself a macchiato or two. Or maybe I’d go for a Russell Hobbs Kettle, to cover all the bases?

And then maybe, once the caffeine has kicked in, give the carpets a good going-over with this SUPER cute pink Hetty!

Take a look at the K&Co website for more home appliances.

In collaboration with K&Co.

Comments { 0 }

Kärcher Window Vac – One Month On

By Mum's the Word on October 28, 2012 in Health, Money, Opinion, Review

Just for the record, the lovely Kärcher people haven’t asked me to do a follow-up to my original post, I’ve just found the device so useful that I wanted to show you how we’ve been using it over the last month.

1. Demisting the car

As much as I love our old car, it’s not all that efficient when it comes to demisting the windows on a cold day. In fact, if I put the blowers on too high and listen to the radio at the same time, it overloads the electrics and the immobiliser has a fit, making the car cut out completely, which is a bit scary when you’re on the brow of a hill on a busy road…but that’s another story! On these cold mornings, I’ve found the Window Vac absolutely invaluable when it comes to giving me visibility quickly. It’s saved me so much time as I don’t have to sit around waiting for the windows to clear before I go anywhere, I just vac all the windows inside and out and we’re ready to go. I can’t emphasise enough how much I love the Vac for this!

2. Sorting out our damp house

We live in a little bungalow which is damp at the best of times and even though we keep our bedroom cold, we still wake up with the windows running with condensation. I keep them open all day long but a quick going over with the vac first gets rid off the excess damp and gives us an overall healthier sleeping space.

3. Cleaning the bathroom

Let’s face it, cleaning the bathroom is a complete drag and although I keep the basin, bath and loo clean, I’m not so good at washing the walls down. However, today we stuck the shower on and built up a load of steam so that Sausage could get a bit of relief from her horrible cough and cold and after, the walls were absolutely soaked. I went over all of the tiles with the Window Vac and they came up a treat. An easy way to steam-clean the bathroom, and I love the fact that I haven’t had to use loads of caustic and expensive chemicals to give it a good clean.

4. Cleaning the patio set

Our patio set has a glass top to the table, which looks really nice but is an absolute pig to keep clean. There’s a rim around the edge which means no matter how much you wash and rinse, it’s impossible to wipe it properly. However, this time I washed the top with a soapy sponge, rinsed it with the hose and then gave it a good going over with the Window Vac and it came up a treat, streak free and completely clean.

I knew before we even got the Vac that I loved the idea of it, but as I said in my previous post, I had high-expectations for it to live up to and I can honestly say that it has more than surpassed them. The longer we have the Vac the more uses I find for it and considering they retail for less than £50 if you shop around, it’s worth every penny. If you’ve got one and know of any uses that I’ve missed, do let me know!

Comments { 2 }

Safety at Home

By Mum's the Word on October 14, 2012 in Family, Sponsored Posts

“BBBBZZCKKKCKKZZZZZZzZzzzzZZ tap tap tap tap BBBBZZCKKKCKKZZZZZZzZzzzzZZ“

You know how you can just be sitting there, minding your own business, watching TV, looking at cats on the internet and then something sneaks into your consciousness, bringing you out of your bubble and back to the real world?

“What IS that bloody noise?!

It was a combination of a buzz/crackle/tap and I think I’d been hearing it for a while, just not letting it actually register at the Reception Desk of my Brain, preventing it from getting through to the Processing Room. Plus, it was piddling down with rain outside and our living room is in an extension with a flat roof, so as soon as you get the slightest drizzle, it sounds like someone is jet-washing your eardrums, so it was quite normal for me to have not heard the buzzcrackletap above the din.

So, I got up to investigate, following the noise with my less-than-keen ears and found myself in the kitchen, looking around and shouting “SHHHHHH!!!” at anyone who made a noise near me. And then…

DRIP

I felt it land on my head and my heart simultaneously sank. The roof was leaking. And worst of all, the roof was leaking THROUGH THE LIGHT FITTING.

CRAP.

I may not be that Tesla fella, but even I know that water+electricity=BOOM, so I hastily turned the kitchen lights off, unsure whether touching the light switch would give me a belt and exited swiftly.

We had a guy come round and fix the roof yesterday and touch wood, we have no more buzzcrackletapping since, but it has got me thinking about the fact that we don’t have any fire protection in the house, hence spending my Sunday morning looking at Fire Extinguishers found at Fire protection Online and wondering seriously if this is something I should be investing in. It’s not something I’d thought about before but I’m honestly thinking it might be a good idea, otherwise next time that annoying noise that interrupts my LOLcat time might be a buzzcrackletapBANG!

Comments { 0 }

To Dye For…A Blow-by-Blow!

By Mum's the Word on August 20, 2011 in All About ME!

I’ve been dying my hair dark since just before Christmas, mainly due to the fact that I had roots down to my ears and no time to get to a hairdressers to get my previously adored peroxide blonde hair reinstated. I loved being blonde, I mean REALLY loved it. But it was WAY too high maintenance, and for the price of one cut and colour as a blondie, I can buy pretty much a whole years worth of DIY dying kits. I used to be a massive spendaholic, but these days I think of everything in terms of Sausage and our family budget, like one cut and blow dry could pay for a whole term of swimming lessons for Sausage, or a For Luna swimsuit (that I’ve been coveting for a LONG time) is about half of our weekly shopping budget.

I’ve tried various different brands so far, opting at first for L’Oreal Preference in Dark Auburn, which I liked, but it seem a lot dearer than the other brands. So next I went for the new John Frieda Precision Foam Colour and was astonished by how easily it went on. Being a being of a home dye nOOb, I’d previously had to ask the long-suffering Husband to help me each time, but the John Frieda one went on SO easily, I could do it myself. I loved the freedom it gave me but (isn’t there always a but?) the colour faded quite quickly. Frustrating, as the colour was lovely and rich at first, but just seemed to lose its lustre in a trice.

Today, I’m typing this with a brand new dye on my head. I’m using Avon Advance Techniques Professional Hair colour in Light Copper. This is a bit of a gamble, as it’s a different brand and a different colour to what I’ve used before, but I’m giving it a go. It’s just £6 at the moment with a free lock-in colour treatment, and I can’t resist a bargain, even if it does leave me looking like a belisha beacon. But it’s due to be rinsed off in 17 minutes, so we’ll see, won’t we?!

Here’s a bit of trivia for you, while we’re waiting…see that t-shirt I’m wearing? It’s my dying t-shirt now, but it used to belong to Husband. The slogan on the front reads ‘Pull my ring and suck my plums’…nice, huh?! It was a promotional t-shirt given to him when he was in the bar management game by a company called Choya Plum Shots who had a brief foray into novelty plum flavoured shots. He once got asked to leave a very posh hotel whilst wearing it to work on their air conditioning and had to spend the rest of the day working with it inside out.

But, I digress.

11 minutes and counting…

5 minutes…

Just for the record, this is in no way a sponsored post or a review for anyone, I just thought it would be SUPER nice and helpful of me to share my results with you lot. You could save a fortune and your local Avon lady will be about 60p richer!

3 minutes…

Right, I’m going to go and get the shower fired up, in readiness for the rinsing..please god let this have turned out okay, Sausage and I are due at a party in about two and a half hours, and I don’t have time for a rescue mission to the local chemist!

*************************************************************************************************

Well. I haven’t taken the towel off of my head yet, but I’m about 96.7% certain that I’ve got bright ginger roots and the rest of my hair looks exactly the same. Just waiting for Hubs to get out of the bathroom so I can assess it properly…

Okay, so the roots are a touch lighter that the rest of my hair, but considering I went from one brand to another, it’s not gone too badly. The conditioner they give you to use after you’ve rinsed the dye off has left my hair feeling super soft and smooth and it smells good too, which is good as the dye itself had a really odd smell, which was half chemical, half josstick…really bizarre! I think I’d use the Avon one again, given the fact that I just have to fill in a form and have it brought straight to my door, and it was pretty easy to apply. Some of the home dyes are a bit runny and end up going everywhere, but this one was quite thick, so it didn’t drip or feel like it was melting off of my head!