M&S Valentine's Dine In 2017- Love Is a Home Cooked Meal For Two

The Marks & Spencer Valentine's Day Dine In seems to get more impressive every year. This time around it's the same £20 deal which includes a starter, main course, side, dessert, wine or prosecco and a box of chocolates. 

The offer is in store now and will be available until Tuesday. The full selection and menu can be perused  on the M&S site, and there are a lot of options to pick from with this deal, more so than during the traditional Dine In menus that run throughout the year. Here is a snapshot of some of the  options, and my picks from what was available in the Bloomfields Bangor store. 

I went for the smoked salmon starter (see a couple of photos down). I can't help but be swayed by golden shiny food!

For main course I chose a pair of sirloin steaks, and there is a rump steak option also. I reckon the garlic mushrooms are the perfect side dish to accompany the steaks. 

There are a couple of really impressive looking desserts, but the stand out dish has to be the rose shaped chocolate salted caramel mousses.  The white chocolate raspberry spheres are equally special.

I skipped the prosecco and chose the pink bubbly, but you can also select white or red wine, plus non-alcoholic choices too. 

So the Dine In is a must-buy for one of the next couple of nights if not Valentine's itself, but the store is also bursting with confectionary gifts for the 14th February. 

There is a clever little deal a lot like the stocking offer they did at Christmas, but this time for £5 you get a heart gift box, then you pick three boxes of sweets to build your gift. It's a little bit of personalisation that will be appreciated, and it's a bargain to boot. 

Of course there are also a dozen gifts already to go to chose from, and I'm loving the metallic shimmer on all the chocolates this year. 

Want To Know The Biggest Interior Trend For 2017? It's Affordable, Green & Clean and Available at IKEA Right Now.

Trends in fashion cycle every 20 years without fail. In the 70s it was flared jean bell bottoms, and in the 90s they returned like clockwork and you were nothing without your bootcut jeans.  

Home interior trends are a little more unpredictable, but one of the huge trends of the 1970s is making a huge comeback in 2017, and the good news is it's very affordable and doesn't involve ripping out an entire bathroom or kitchen. 

Pantone, the US experts on colour categorisation named their 2017 colour of the year to be 'Greenery', and The Telegraph stated,

"With Greenery, Pantone hammered home what a lot of us have been suspecting for a while: plants are here to stay. And, if the approach of their campaign is anything to go by, plants in urban environments, for digitally connected people - which can only mean that houseplants are set to become an even bigger phenomenon in 2017."

So the modern, chic interior can get a revamp & look oh so 2017 by investing in a good couple of house plants. Where better to start than IKEA, where you'll get more bang for your buck, or plant for your pound as it were, than a typical garden centre.

IKEA has everything you'll need, plants of all shapes and sizes, pots, plant stands, indoor growing equipment and more.  

The trend within the trend looks like it will be cacti, which I've always loved, and IKEA have lots of varieties of them to start a little collection should you be like me and not too great with remembering to water my plants. Cacti need less attention and can thrive indoors for years. 

If you think you are so totally un-green fingered that you could even kill a cactus, IKEA has a bountiful selection of fake plants. I've a mixture of real and fake to show you, so let's get stuck in.

Before

I told IKEA I wanted to make over my small bathroom into an indoor jungle, so they sent me a selection of items to make my dream a reality. 

My bathroom is pretty plain. I'm in a rental, so I can't go totally mad renovating, so adding fresh accessories and plants is a nice easy way to jazz up what otherwise is a very ordinary room. 

Ta da! My mini rainforest has been added! A mix of real and fake plants, and charcoal bathroom accessories.

At the sink station I've added ceramic cacti ornaments  (£12) and clean white soap and toothbrush holders.

The two plants at the sink are real, the smaller being £7.50 and the larger at £19 . They are a plant called the Peace Lily, and it's included in Buzzfeed's run down of plants which can purify the air within your living spaces. So besides being beautiful, it's also making your air cleaner.

The large white ceramic pots are £2 which is a total bargain. 

My window area has the FEJKA fake grass potted plant box (£20) which is satisfyingly neat and tidy. The grey knitted storage pots are a set of four, watch out for the other pot later. In the bathroom I used the two small knitted pots to store shower gel.

The two plants behind the shower space are both fake, but look pretty convincing to me. The larger plant is a fake bamboo and for £35 it's huge. It's nice to know I won't end up killing it!

 Large Bamboo plant

 Smaller bamboo style plant

So I'm really happy with my bathroom makeover, but I had some cacti left over that I ran out of space for, so I've added them to my living room to show you how you can use smaller plants to liven up your interiors too.

I'm an absolute sucker for carnivorous plants, and IKEA have four different types, the classic being the Venus flytrap.

It's almost impossible to grown one of these from seed (I've tried), and I've a previous murder charge for letting one die before when a certain toddler worked out if you poked the 'mouths' of the plant they will snap shut.

Unfortunately if you trigger the trap too much without there being a tasty fly in there for the plant to digest, you literally exhaust the plant and it ends up dying. So while it might be tempting to trigger the jaws to snap shut by poking the plant, be aware you are effectively weakening it and increasing the chance of it not living through the next month. 

Okay, so that's my flytrap lecture over, on to the easiest plants to look after in the world, and the most bad ass cause they can cause you a great deal of pain should you accidentally brush against one- cacti! 

I had a collection of cacti when I lived in Holywood when Smix was a baby, but once he got mobile I had to move them around out of his way so much, I ended up getting rid of them. Now he's nine, if he pokes one that's his own fault and not my bad parenting, so welcome back spiky friends!

IKEA sent me five prickly beauties from their excellent diverse cacti on offer and I found two pots fitted beautifully into the rectangular grey knitted bathroom accessory pot. I've seen 'non-pot' pots as another interior trend, and there's a Belfast company who sells plants in these heavy paper sacks with shiny gold interiors. 

So my living room now has cacti and a flytrap, but also the large palm like houseplant is another from the Buzzfeed list of plants that can filter out toxins in your air. It's a cornstalk dracaena, also from IKEA but bought two years ago. If you really like the look of it I'm sure they would have something similar in their large plant section.

Lastly keeping with the cacti trend, they kindly sent this cuddly cacti for Smix! I love it to bits! You'll find lots of cacti items round the whole store, including the must buy for me- cacti print tumblers for 75p. 

So let the door close on my glimpse into my home, the final touch for the bathroom jungle being this magic unicorn head which I found in Home Bargains.

Are you ready to get green-fingered and embrace the houseplant trend of 2017? Shop everything you've seen at IKEA online.

Charity Shop Treasure Hunting- Holywood

Holywood's maypole

Another instalment of charity shop visits, this time Holywood. They have about six or seven shops, and some vintage antique shops too. 

Its a nice little afternoon out too, with lots of quaint coffee shops, specialty delis, and independent boutiques. 

Vintage My Little Ponies. I also spotted a Rugrats doll- the ginger one? I want to say Chuckie? 

Lovely Irish linen

Royal wedding stuff is uber kitsch collectible. Charles & Diana trays, plates, moneyboxes, etc. 

More original packaging. Check out the top left suggestion of how to use your push-light. Fancy dinner time. 

The following items, apart from the last, are all from an antique shop beside the maypole. They are priced up accordingly, so you will pay more than a charity shop price if you want to go buy anything I show. 

I love the bird cage. It's a really big home interior trend to have bronze metal accessories, so this would be a show stopping centre piece of a room. There's even a bird in the cage.

The pair of dogs is a classic kitsch decoration and they come in all colours. It's a 60s/70s 'every home has them' furnishing, like paintings of gypsy kids by Dallas Simpson, or three flying ducks on the wall. 

And there's me! 

Lastly, I like to finish with the weirdest thing I spot, like last week's Mona Lisa, so here she is! 

Centra Go Back Stage in Vegas With Carl Frampton #LiveTodayNI

Pictured: Michael McCormack, managing director, Musgrave NI with Centra Live Well ambassadors, Jane McClenaghan (nutrition); Bridgeen Rea (mindfulness) and Johnny Davis (RunTogether).

Centra has teamed up with Carl Frampton’s award-winning and highly respected boxing coach, Shane McGuigan, along with a top team of Ambassadors, to help inspire the people of Northern Ireland to Live Well Every Day.

The new Centra Live Well programme aims to educate and inspire consumers to make healthier choices and encourage communities across Northern Ireland get active.

Get friendly with  Centra NI on Facebook and see the behind the scenes action with Carl Frampton in Vegas. Or follow them on Twitter to keep up to date with instore offers, competitions and giveaways.

Zany Illustrations & The Real Housewives Entertainment Paradox

I love love love The Real Housewives. I've watched all of the Beverly Hills franchise, Miami, newer ones like Dallas & Auckland, but I've just finished a major five week binge of The Real Housewives of New York. 

I'm now right up to the end of season 8, ready for Hayu to screen season 9 in the next few months. 

I spotted these hilarious illustrations of the ladies on  But Youre Like Really Pretty, where you can find lots of Kardashian content too. Strangely I don't watch the Kardashians, despite it being the Bible of reality tv shows. I tried to get into it but there wasn't enough fighting in it to entertain me.

That leads me to my current problem. Something I call The Real Housewives Entertainment Paradox. 

I've finished RHONY, and next up is Orange County. Hayu has ten seasons, enough to keep me going for maybe two months.  

So why am I reluctant to start watching? Well, it's the fact that the earlier the Housewives season, the less drama and fighting there is. So whilst I've ten seasons to watch, the first four are going to be set in the mid 2000s and involve a lot of watching them go to the hairdressers and politely eat dinner with each other. 

So why not skip ahead to season six or seven? Well there's a problem there too. When they do yell at each other, you haven't done your homework and don't know all the underlying tensions and alliances causing the ruckus to occur.  

So to fully enjoy the drama of later seasons, I have to do the homework and watch the earlier, slower seasons before they realised big viewing figures were brought about by making these women catfight as much as possible.

With Orange County I have another more personal problem. They are ALL blonde. I have slight facial blindness and find it hard to recognise people even if I've met them twice or three times in person- so put seven identical thin blonde women on screen and I have no idea why anyone is doing anything. 

So I'm going to have to just knuckle down and watch the boring, early seasons so I can get to enjoy the later seasons where one of their husbands pretends to have cancer etc.  

Life is tough, right?  

Want to chat Housewives? I'm @rudedoodle on Twitter. 

Post Script- I found a way to cheat. You can skip the first three seasons of RHOOC by just watching the reunions to get the round up of what little disagreements have happened between the ladies.  

M&S Balanced For You: A Refreshed Menu of Healthy Eating & its 3 for £10 Right Now

If you don't put on weight over Christmas, you haven't done the holiday season justice. The average person puts on half a stone, which can easily be shifted in January with careful watching of calories for a week or two. I never begin trying to lose this weight on January 1st. There are still so many left overs to indulge in, and boxes of sweets to work through. Once we get about two weeks into January and Smix is back at school, I can turn to losing the Christmas chub.

A nice way to do it is with simple calorie counting and the Marks and Spencer Eat Well ranges. You watch for the sunflower symbol and know those ranges, including all the fresh fruit and veg, is a good choice for healthy eating sessions.

I usually skip breakfast and just have coffee, but when I'm trying to lose weight I actually add in this extra meal. It helps get your metabolism working and stops snacking cravings later on. M&S have these snazzy little on the go porridge pots, shown above, for £1. You can also buy packs of sachets of porridges for £2.50

There are several healthy eating ranges at M&S. Count on Us is a low calorie range of typical meals made with less calories. Fuller Longer is a range of meals with ingredients specially picked to fill you up with good stuff.  

The range I chose from this week is Balanced for You. Again it focuses on keeping calories down, but also using great, healthier ingredients, so it's a bit of a mid way point between the previous two ranges. 

It also has a selection of fresh new dishes this January, and who can resist prawn & crab macaroni cheese? Hard to believe this can be used as 'diet food'.  

Lastly I chose Balanced for You for this post as the meals were all on 3 for £10 mix and match when I was in store on Monday. Means you can stock up on 6 meals to cover your whole week evening dinner for £20, taking one day a week off for dinner as a cheat meal. 

So porridge for breakfast, Balanced for You for dinner, but what for lunch. When you are watching your weight soups are a great way to fill up at lunch. M&S are kings of delicious soups, and again their range just happens to be on offer, buy one soup, get the other half price. The beetroot soup is my favourite,  but I'm keen to try the crab bisque. 

I'll let you know how my weight loss goes!

We Went to the Northern Ireland Sing Movie Premiere!

Sing is the new animated movie from Universal, from the studios who bring us the Minions.  

Sing is part musical I suppose, as the characters perform dozens of well known pop classics during the story of a small theatre putting on a singing competition. 

The story itself is a tried and tested, feel good, overcoming adversity tale, with no shocking twists or modern edgy plot lines, but that's what makes it a great family film that even toddlers will be able to follow & fall in love with. 

Coincidentally Smix is obsessed with Koalas right now, and the lead character is the theatre owner koala Buster Moon, voiced by Matthew McConaughey.

Universal Ireland invited us along to the Northern Irish premiere on Sunday, at the Odeon in the Victoria Square complex in Belfast. 

I think it was both our first times at a premiere, so it was very exciting to get on the red carpet! 

We had such a good time, and loved the film itself too. There are screenings this weekend, so check your local listings, then the proper full release is on the 27th of January.  

So it's a great one to pencil in for half term. 

Lastly, I had to include this gif from the Magic Mirror, because it made me laugh so much when they printed it out. How to mortify your nine year old son in four easy steps!

Charity Shop Treasure Hunting- Ards, Plus the Origins of The World of Kitsch

The World of Kitsch has come a long way since its humble beginnings in 2009. I've had websites of my own since 2000/01, starting with digital camera photos of local gigs in Belfast, updating twice or three times a week as I bounced around partying in my early 20s. 

My gig photo website logo  

That also took on a form of its own with batches of photos of nights out being uploaded, this was before the times where a club would have a designated photographer taking crowd pics to have you cringe at the day after. My photos still made people cringe, but the site got a ton of hits, with its apt headline, "Like the Tatler, but full of wretches".  

If you want to nosy,  parts of that old site are still working.

In 2007 I got married & had Smix, and wasn't drinking or going out any more, so my online presence stilted. 

Then my old flat mate Ron suggested I start a blog, I think after seeing some of my charity shop purchases that week on MySpace, or early Facebook, or whatever I was using at the time. 

So he helped me chose Posterous, and set up The World of Kitsch, and now I had a place to post the photos of the weird stuff I bought for my house.

Then however, the blog took off in a different direction, and I was lucky to begin to work with brands and feature products outside the realm of second hand goods.  

The other factor limiting charity shop posts was that I ran out of room in my home to display any more junk. 

However in the summer there I found this corner cabinet, which I knew I could squeeze into my home, and I have yet to fill it. So I decided to try to keep true to the early blog, I'll be including some more charity shop hunting posts, picking one town at a time to pillage. 

Today I visited Ards. It's a great place to charity shop for two reasons. 

The first is the sheer number of shops, there's at least ten. The second is that there are independent charity shops, which means they tend to have more old fashioned junk, which is what I'm after. 

The best two are the Elim store and the Assisi shop. 

There's also a really great Oxfam, which is excellent for clothing. 

The Elim has stuff decades old, as well as a treasure trove of books to scour, novels and hard back information books. I filled out my Childcare collection a bit more from their shelves. 

I didn't actually buy anything today, but I did stand staring at this cabinet pondering was there anywhere I could fit just one more of these in my house.  

£40 is a really decent price for one of these display cabinets, and this one is a good size too. It was in the independent charity shop opposite Knotts. 

Lastly, Ards even had a version of the Mona Lisa!