Help Ikea Bring Light to Refugees

Help Ikea this February and March to make a difference. 

Who Wants a Sneaky Peek Through the Keyhole of My New House?

A couple of weeks ago my son and I moved into a lovely, freshly painted house, and we have made it into our home. Here, have a little look around. 

Recognise the wallpaper from a few blog posts ago? 

Buy your Ikea outdoor door mat to match your nail polish, obviously. 

Framed Ladybird Book covers under the stairs. 

Every home needs a Castle Grayskull. 

Birds I built myself from a couple of kits I picked up at Dunluce Castle two years ago. 

Finally have space for this gorgeous Ikea table. 

Mrs Meow has another week of being stuck in doors before she is allowed to go explore. Look at that little face. 

Card from my son's friend Connie. 

Hand decorated cupboard as a lovely leaving present from my old landlady. 

What's instore this February at Lidl?

Part of the fun of Lidl is never knowing what they'll be selling that week. Yesterday my son was in luck as this super soft, cosy, hooded dressing gown was in our local store for £7.99, with some cool Star Wars slippers for £3.99.

There are also some pretty smart trainers for the coming spring months. 

I rave on Twitter about Lidl's fruit and veg. The quality and prices are amazing compared to the main supermarkets. I find if I buy fresh vegetables from another supermarket, if I don't use them that day or the day after, they go soft or gross really quickly. Lidl fruit and veg is significantly cheaper, and LASTS. I challenge you to do your fresh produce shop there this week, and see the difference for yourself. Especially if you love grapes. Mix and match two punnets for £2; in other supermarkets you wouldn't even get one punnet for £2. 

I also love Lidl for my smoked salmon fix. You get a lot of salmon for your £. These packs with mustard and dill dressing are just £2.29. The little pots of various antipasti are £1.79.  Lazy-mummy pregrated cheese is so handy and it's £1.99 for this big bag.

Lidl has a lot in for Valentines. I don't know if I'll get any Valentines this year yet, so I bought myself my own chocolates! Just £2.99 and very much like Thorton's Continental Selection. 

The Heat, Eat & Enjoy range has been expanded. I picked up the honey roast root veg (£1.79) and the honey mustard ham (£3.99) for a delicious and easy midweek meal. 

Finally, sometimes you just can't beat a dinner of chicken nuggets, chips and beans. Lidl nuggets are just £1.99 for a family pack. 

Retro & Vintage Wallpapers, Get the Real Deal at WallpaperFromThe70s.com

On the 1st February, my son and I move into our new, little house. A blank canvas to make into our home. We are very excited and can't wait to add all our own special touches to the various rooms. At the moment the walls have all been given a fresh, clean splash of cream paint. I have so many vintage art prints, and wonderous pieces of mid-century furniture, that picking a fussy wallpaper or bright wall colour isn't really necessary. That was what I thought anyway, until I stumbled upon Wallpaper From the 70s online store this afternoon.

This store is the real deal. Replica prints of genuine 70s' designs, as well as modern takes on retro wallpaper themes. The store is more like a gorgeous pattern museum than a plain vintage wallpaper shop, lovingly curated by designers who really know their stuff.

Did you know you can buy Versace wallpaper? Well you can! As well as other designer brands such as NLXL and Studio Ditte. The papers are divided into sections for ease of choice, floral, baroque, kids, novelty, glamorous, romantic, geometric and my favourite section We Love the 70s. Lots of homely, warm brown and oranges.

With hundreds of amazing prints to choose from, how do you know which is right for your space? Well, the site has a very handy feature for trying out the patterns in situ at home. You can print an exact replica sized sample right from the website, to get a feel for the size of the pattern and colour in your own room. Of course you can also request a section of paper as a real sample, but the print option is excellent if you quickly want to compare several papers before placing an order.

So you've picked your favourite wallpaper, next you'll need to know how many rolls to purchase. You don't want to run out of your chosen paper with one panel to go. Again Wallpaper From the 70s provides the tools to make this easy as pie. Simply measure your feature wall, or find out the area of the walls you are covering and input that to their site. The clever tool will calculate how many rolls you need to buy, most importantly it takes into consideration the particular pattern of your chosen paper, and how it will line up with itself, so you won't fall short of coverage when you take into account how the paper will sit pattern wise.

So, which wallpaper have I chosen for the feature wall with the fireplace in our new home? Well, you'll just have to wait and see. All will be revealed in my blog posts over the coming month. I'll let you all have a good nosy! In the meantime here is a selection of some of the papers I loved from the Wallpapers From the 70s site, which do you love?

The No Diet Zone! Treats from Marks & Spencer to Get You Through Miserable January from The World of Kitsch.

This is a healthy eating free zone! We all are aware from 1st January tv ads bombard us with guilt for over eating during the holiday season. So for me to do a blog post with Marks and Spencer's healthy eating range, or feature lots of fresh fruit and veg and recipes would just mirror a thousand other blogs & featurettes you've read this fortnight.

So instead I approached picking this week's M&S goodies with the mind set that seeing it's gloomy, old January, what would I like as a treat to brighten my day? Here are some ideas from the Food Hall. Don't deprive yourself during the most miserable month of the year, follow my lead and tuck in!

£1.85 per litre

The classic sweets range of fizzy drinks are bang on the money, taste-wise. I also was tempted by the still pear juice and couldn't resist the tin of the lemon shortbread, which would make a lovely little gift for £3.

£2.50 pear juice, £3 tin

The very opposite of restriction and dieting- an all butter Belgian waffle with some posh chocolate.

waffles £2, chocolate bars £2 each

Healthy admittedly, but not plain by anyone's standard, sushi rolls and calamari snack.

sushi £3.50, prawn dip £2.50

Sprucefield M&S had lots of these exquisite cheese truffles left, but your own local store may not, as technically they were party food for the new year. If you can get a pack, do. The beetroot cheese is especially divine. I also like the look of the healthy eating Beetroot and Goats cheese salad.

Cheese £2.50, snack £3

Hands up if you got yourself a serious cheese habit over Christmas? I'm not going cold turkey, instead I picked the cheddar with smoked tomatoes and Cornish cove with chilli.

£2.50 each

Facebook has gone a little juicing crazy this January, but you can buy 3 bottles for £5 in M&S and never go near a juicer. The clementine juice tastes exactly like the little orange treasures Santa leaves you. Delicious.

3 for £5

Mealwise I liked the look of these Chinese dishes.

£3.50 £4.25

Sometimes when you look in the sleeve there isn't much that resembles the photo on the cover of your meal, but I was pleased to see lots of fish in both these dishes.

One of my son's favourite treats, he just loves dough balls.

£2

I'm a sucker for anything vanilla if I see little black pod speckles in it. I expected this to taste just like icecream, but it doesn't. 

£1.90

Dame May McFettridge Celebrates 25 Years in Pantomime

If you're from Northern Ireland you knew the comedy character May McFettridge years before Mrs Brown's Boys ever appeared. She's a national treasure and this year marks 25 years of her appearance as the dame in the yearly Grand Opera House, Belfast, Pantomime. 

In celebration the BBCNI website has tracked down the posters from each year, but are missing some of them from the early 90s. Could you help? Click through to see the whole gallery, and to contact them if you have the old programs by any chance. 

I went to this one, the year means I must have been 14. I remember May throwing packets of Cadbury's buttons into the audience.

A very fresh-faced Julian Simmons

New Year's Day Ikea Trip For Ideas For Our New Home

Smix & I are getting excited about our new, little home, so we took a trip to Ikea, Belfast for inspiration of what we will decorate with.

We don't need a chair, but if we did....

Super cute storage

This looks like a 1960s' G-Plan original

So shiny

I must have a plant wall..it's my dream

Smix just wants to upgrade from a toddler bed, to a bunk bed. I think we can manage that.

But which one?

Whichever one he gets he wants this canopy.

Don't need, but do want.

Nice fresh duvet cover too, will pick this up when we do move.

I went ahead and bought one of these cute toilet brushes today, with a matching bin for the bathroom.

Smix loves these Tetris/Death Star type lamps

Plants! Taking inspiration from Gertrude Anna's Timmy White, I'll be filling our new home with lots of plants and plastic dinosaurs.

My Mystery Blonde Bargain. Who is She?

I have a couple of original Louis Shabner prints, and I leapt on this one I spotted in an East Belfast charity shop today for only £3. I've never seen this print online before, and a Google Image Search doesn't bring any pics of her up. So I don't know her name, as it's not printed on a label on the back, as usual with the original 70s' frames.

Anyone seen this print before, or know the title of the print?