Instant Pumpkin Spice Lattes At Home On Tap, With Califia Farms Cold Brew

If like me you struggle to make a pumpkin spice latte at home that rivals Starbucks, Califia Farms have you covered! Their brand new cold brew flavour for autumn 2022 is Pumpkin Spice with Almond. It’s vegan, so everyone can try a mug! I even heated mine up and added some Asda chocolate spray cream on top to make it extra fancy.

It is available now in selected Asda stores, and will also be in Sainsbury’s soon too. If you are in Northern Ireland, selected Spar stores are stocking it in their chilled aisle. There it’s just £2.50 for a 750ml bottle, cheaper than a single, coffee chain, pumpkin spice latte!

If pumpkin spice isn’t your thing, they also have a range of other flavours year round. I spotted on the US Califia Farms website that they have seasonal varieties for Christmas too, including Peppermint Mocha and Holiday Nog (eggnog). Hoping these reach our shores this December too.

Halloween 2022 - Spooky Cushions For A Comfy Autumn

I may have gone a bit overboard where Halloween cushions are concerned, and my bed is filling up with them before I even get previous years’ decorations out of the garage.

The Spooky Season velvet cushion is my favourite, which I found in TK Maxx. I haven’t seen it on their online store, but they do have a good selection of Halloween pillowcases to purchase there. That includes the retro style pillowcases I have on my bed.

Asda also has a wonderful selection of cushions, both spooky & cute. They also have duvet covers, blankets and lots more in their Halloween homeware online section. They have Disney themed bedding to match the Stitch cushion, and the Winnie the Pooh cushion, you really can go all out with your decoration for the season now.

Somewhere you might not initially think of for home items, but where I’ve found loads of cool autumn bits and bobs this year, is SHEIN. The large, retro style, purple ghost cushion cover on my bed is a SHEIN item, and I also nabbed this cute vampire kitty cover, which has a matching wall hanging which I’ll share on Instagram when I fully decorate in a few weeks.

It’s worth checking out SHEIN for decorations, but bear in mind shipping takes about two weeks for items to be with you in the U.K.

Halloween 2022 - Matching Disney Pyjamas From George At Asda

I have always been a bit of a Halloween fan. When I was first married, my ex and I shared a tiny little flat in Holywood, and I can still remember buying imported, American, Halloween decorations in TK Maxx for it way back then fifteen years ago.

Northern Ireland, and I suppose the U.K. as a whole, have only really started doing Halloween as a big house-decorating event the past ten years or so. Growing up in the 80s and 90s it was really just carving turnips as we didn’t have pumpkins, which seems crazy now. Costumes were plastic bin bags for witches’ dresses, and those plastic masks that cut the heck out of your lips.

Now we have home decorations starting to appear in the shops months before, similar to Christmas, AND I LOVE IT! Right now I have more Halloween decorations than Christmas ones, stored in plastic tubs in my garage. So I thought I would fire up my blog again and share my finds this year, as I already have done on my Instagram in previous years, starting with pyjamas!

This year Asda has this very cute family set of Mickey and Minnie Halloween pyjamas. Prices start at £10 for children’s sizes, and £14 for adults.

For kids we also have Ghostbuster print pyjamas, some very cute Pumpkin, Ghost & Cat pyjamas, and a snuggly pumpkin onesie. There are a few other Halloween prints I haven’t included too, so lots to choose from.

For women there are also these witchy Potion pyjamas, and Crystal print pyjamas, at a pretty reasonable £12.50 a pair. George at Asda also have tonnes of Halloween themed t-shirts already in stock, as well as a small selection of fancy dress, if you are hoping to plan for October early.

I will be updating The World of Kitsch with more Halloween finds in the coming weeks, and sharing my own decorations closer to the actual date.

You Can Buy Coronavirus Themed, Mask-Wearing Santa Christmas Decorations For Your 2020 Christmas Tree, It’s Just That Kind of Year.

You can buy quarantine themed Christmas decorations, ironically from Chinese super-shopping site Aliexpress. There’s delicate glass Santa bauble in his pale blue, disposable paper mask. There’s a ceramic toilet roll emblazoned with the dreaded and doomed named year we are living through 2020. You can also buy any number of personalisable (is that a word?) family baubles where you choose the number of people huddled together in their festive PPE gear.

It’s hard to decide whether they are comical, morbid, or collector’s items to pass down through the years to remember what’s sure to be a very weird Christmas for us all. I definitely felt they were strange and kitsch enough to warrant firing up the blog again for, after a nine month break.

I bought a couple for myself, the masked Santa was just too unusual to pass up on. If you are intrigued by them too, you can find any of them by searching ‘quarantine Christmas’ on Aliexpress. If you are a new shopper to the site and would like to use my referral link, which gives both you and I some discount coupons if you use it, click through here.

PaddyDraws Scenes of Nostalgic Northern Ireland - Treat Yourself This January 2020 With a Print of Auntie Annies, Bangor High Street, Or The Cabin in Donaghadee

When @ngorlly posted her snazzy new print she had bought off Etsy at Christmas, I got very excited and just as nostalgic as she was with it being our old stomping ground Auntie Annies. The now closed down pub and club was home to my favourite Saturday night indie dance club, Skibunny, DJed by Mark Gordon and Tanya Melotte, with the occasional appearance by Rigsy. Quite frankly I would have gone to Skibunny seven nights a week if they would have indulged me during 2004-2006.

The print in question was the work of PaddyDraws, who has a splendidly quaint Etsy store described aptly as ‘nostalgic Northern Ireland’. One of his other standout pieces is an ABC of Northern Ireland, with the ‘J’ of course being for ‘our Julian’, and 'T’ for ‘Tayto’.

Check out Paddy’s store for prints in various sizes, including locations like The Cabin in Donaghadee, and Bangor’s kebab sauce legend Piccola Pizza.

Regal Pet Portraits Are Set To Be A Huge Gifting Trend This Christmas 2019. Get Clued In AND Get An Exclusive Discount Code For The Drowsy Chaperone.

Mrs Meow portrait by the drowsy chaperone

The U.K. and Ireland are both well known nations of pet lovers. We adore our dogs, cats and other assorted beasties we share our home with. We spend silly money on their food, beds, toys and let them sleep on our sofas and beds often causing rows between husbands and wives, but the pets always win. What is it about our four legged friends that in a couple of hundred generations have gone from helping us hunt, to being totally and utterly pampered and in some cases totally ruling the roost?

Myself, I have Mrs Meow. She has bizarre origins, and came to us as a stray, explained here, and wormed her way in slowly, and now sleeps on my bed every night. She has a very kind nature, never ever scratches, even when she’s unhappy about getting her flea drops on, or collar adjusted, or a fur tatt snipped off, but she does have a very snooty, grumpy face. A face that makes her absolutely perfect for the new pet portraits that I am backing to be huge gifting trends for this Christmas for pet lovers.

The Drowsy Chaperone are a group of lifelong friends who started their pet portrait business together after making a print of one of their own dogs, loving it, and realising if they got so much enjoyment out of a design like this, other pet owners probably would too. Since then they haven’t looked back, and have been able to open fulfilment centres in both the US and Europe, so turnaround on prints can be pretty speedy. They say 1-2 weeks because they prefer to underpromise - my print came in a couple of days.

The process is simple. You take photos of your pet, and with The Drowsy Chaperone it can be more than just a cat or dog, they accept other animals too. These need to be good quality photos as they will be printed in a large format, but they will let you know if they aren’t suitable. You then choose from ‘Female Portraits’ or ‘Male Portraits’ to choose the ‘costume’ your pet will be wearing in the print. I choose Mrs Meow to wear ‘The Princess’ costume, I think she looks very fancy!

Mrs Meow as ‘the priNcess’ by the droWsy chaperone

There are many other ‘olden days’ renaissance era outfits, but also police uniforms, an astronaut spacesuit, a butler’s garb, a Sheriff, and a Lieutenant. It’s up to your which persona fits your pet the best.

Then you choose the size of canvas you want to order. All prints are made with high quality inks that never fade, on 1.5 inch stretched canvas frames complete with hooks for hanging. There are four sizes to choose from. The print is very professional, and nice and clear. I am absolutely delighted with mine, it fits right in with my kitsch home and the colouring and likeness is just perfect.

I can see these being a fantastic Christmas gift idea for a loved one who dotes over their furry friend. It’s certainly something to buy the person who has everything too; no-one has a museum style portrait of their Schnauzer dressed as a 16th century courtier.

So if you want to get your shopping started, or better yet, transform your own pet into a masterpiece, The Drowsy Chaperone have been so kind to give me a discount code for World of Kitsch readers to get 10% off their order when they buy a print. Just enter the code worldofkitsch to get your 10% off and do share with me your print over on Instagram, I would love to see what you choose.

You can also follow The Drowsy Chaperone over on Instagram to see their pet portrait transformations, and keep an eye out for competitions.

Cats & Collectables, Some Late Additions to the Karen Mabon Summer 2019 Range

Karen Mabon’s summer collection came out a couple of months back, but I happened to notice a few new pieces in her store, since I last blogged about it.

The first new design is the huge 90cm x 90cm pure silk Cat Amongst The Pigeons print. It’s a rich black with contrasting kitties and the familiar UK sight of a pack of pigeons. Only Karen could make pigeons chic.

Then there’s The Collector, a pastel pink and mauve menagerie of kitsch. I adore this design and can spot a number of items I’ve either owned, or currently own.

Lastly there are some new silk trouser bottoms, some which match existing silk shirts, so you can pair them as pyjamas. The blue Breakfast at Tiffany’s shirt could definitely be worn as a daytime look.

Keep an eye on Karen’s Instagram, as she has some very cool, totally new products launching soon with her designs.

Say Goodbye To Boring Protein Bars & Hello To M&S’s Rainbow of a Range of High Protein Meals & Snacks - Including Salami Crisps!

£1.50 Each

Okay, so there’s no fooling you guys into thinking I’m a protein-shake-swilling gym goddess, but I have drank that stuff in the past, and that stuff tastes like drinking moths. Worse still is my continued self-delusion that if I buy a protein chocolate bar, it’s not really eating ‘badly’, then tasting the thing and wishing I had just bought a big 100g Dairy Milk and got on with it.

Foods labelled with protein as their selling point are showing up more & more in our supermarkets, with new products, and revamped ‘extra protein’ versions of traditional snacks becoming the norm. But why should we care about ‘getting our protein in’ with our diet, especially if we aren’t gym bunnies- is there any advantage?

£5

Research has shown that protein, rather than fat or carbs, has the ability to keep you feeling fuller longer, and reduce cravings, which can help you regulate your weight. It literally acts as the building block for new muscle, so it can help you increase your strength. Animal protein especially has been proven to help bone density, which can be really beneficial for women during menopause. It’s also been shown to reduce blood pressure, which can help with heart disease, strokes and kidney disease. There are several other medical and scientific reasons upping protein in your diet is a plus, but let’s get into the food, shall we?

My top item to seek out on this Marksies’ trip was their new charcuterie-style, air-dried snacking crisps (top image). You’ll find these curious canapés in the fridges, as they are made from salami, chorizo and Serrano ham. They aren’t fried, are surprisingly low calorie per pack (under 150 cals) and are, of course, high protein. Super for those on low carb diets like Keto, these unusual snacks are very crunchy and packed with flavour.

Plant kitchen nourish bowl £3.50 : Beets protein pot £2

Next I took a nosy in the takeaway, sandwich aisle, and found some new products that really wowed me. The new Falafel & Chargrilled Vegetable salad (above) looks like something you would be presented with in a fancy little artisan vegan cafe. The veggie and ‘healthy’ options Marks and Spencer has to choose from are miles away from what, to me at least, used to feel like picking a salad was a ‘boring’ lunch. In fact to me the protein pots look more tempting than the sandwiches! If a sarnie is your thing though, they do have a special new range of protein rich sandwiches too.

Chicken £2 : Prawn £2.20

M&S was one of the first places I ever saw mini ‘protein pots’ on sale, a few years ago, with their boiled egg and spinach pot. Their range has expanded now with high protein pots like the Beautiful Beets & Feta Cheese variety, Chargrilled Chicken and Edamame, and Chilli & Coriander King Prawn.

For vegans, the Plant Kitchen range also has nourish bowls to takeaway, like the Edamame & Black Rice Salad (above) which is another rainbow coloured dream.

£5

Another new high protein choice is the Free Range Egg & Avocado Salad. The colourful cabbage makes this one another tempting choice.

Lastly, some handy pots to stock the cupboard with for snacking (below). These quick and easy dinners can be whirled in the microwave, and again there’s a high protein option in the Balanced For You Smokey Pulled Pork option. There’s also a Chilli & Rice bowl, or Bolognese Pasta.

£3 each

Vegans have several choices too, the Cauliflower, Coconut & Lentil Dahl pot, as well as Moroccan Lentil Stew a Mixed Bean Chipotle Chilli.

There is also traditional favourites like Shepherd’s Pie with Root Vegetable Mash. All these pots are £3 each and will be great lunch options as we head into autumn. I’m looking forward to all the new foods for that season too!

You can also check out some high protein recipes on the M&S website, if you fancy cooking something yourself from scratch.