Typecast

I saw the results of a survey from a professional hair product retailer this week (oh yes, this is the sort of exciting email I receive on a daily basis...).  The survey was based around which celebrity hair style women would most like to have * huge eye roll * The top ten favourites were Kate Middleton (I'm sure she's known as something different these days), Jerry Hall (it's amazing what three weeks on Strictly Come Dancing  does for your profile), Cheryl Cole (it must have been her   X-Factor USA BIG hair period and not anything to do with the L'Oreal advert at all ), Kelly Brooke, Victoria Beckham, Adele, Holly Willo'booby, Nicole Shirtslinger, Michelle Obama (* ponders that one for a moment *) and someone from Geordie Shore who I've never heard of (Charlotte, if you're that way inclined). Hang on a minute... don't all these women have long flowing extensions locks?  What's up with short hair?* indignant look * I think I might ha...

Finding affordable, but well-wearing clothes for children during frugal times can be difficult but Yellow Mellon contacted me asking if they could attempt to prove that their affordable clothing range was worth shouting about. I had a chat on the phone with Priyanka from Yellow Mellon to find out more about the company.  The reason they can keep their prices so low is because they are either manufactured by them or they are the distributors.  They are able to cut out the middle man and pass on that saving to their customers.  They have been wholesalers of children's clothing since 1964 with their range for children being from newborn to 13 year old (although some lines go up to 16 years old too).  They stock all sorts of well known names such as Disney , Hello Kitty , Spiderman, Manchester United and more and will even be stocking Converse very soon!  Delivery is free in the UK for orders over £40 and you can get £5 off your order if it totals £50 o...

Sometimes, it's cathartic to write stuff down and get it 'out there' but it's always useful to have another person's opinion too.  That's what Blognonymous is all about.  When it feels like there is no-one in "real life" to help you order your thoughts and be impartial, we're always here to let you sound off and ask for advice.  Sometimes we know what to do and what we'd advise a friend but when it comes to making those steps for ourselves they seem impossible.  When commenting, if you prefer to remain anonymous when commenting please sign out of Disqus (if you have used it before), write your comment, click "Post as..." and you will see "guest" appear as an option. If you would like to contact any of the Blognonymous team please click on the Blognonymous image  for more details. ¨¨°º©©º°¨¨ A few years ago, I was visiting my GP when he told me that he thought I was suffering from depression.  I hadn...

It is two days before payday and the cupboards feel a bit like they should belong in Old Mother Hubbard's house.  I was looking for something to snack on with my mid-afternoon brew ( tea with three sugars, if you don't mind ) but it looks like the teenagers in the house have cleared us out.  Well, everything except the Digestives. The humble Digestive biscuit.  Boring or misunderstood? This was the question I pondered whilst munching on the abandoned biscuits so I did what any serious blogger did.  I Instagrammed the fuck out of a picture of my grub and posed my social media network with the same question.  The responses were interesting. Twitter , as always, was the most responsive ( I don't think this lot have anything better to do ): It's my favourite biscuit ( @ caroljs ) Misunderstood! Spread on some chocolate, philadelphia and you have a match made in heaven. But just as nice with cheese and Branson [sic] pickle ( @ mumsmoments who did apo...

I uploaded the image above as my new cover picture on Facebook and even though I've written about my discovery of old cassette tapes before, it sparked another discussion, with Leanne highlighting my ownership of The Hits Tape 6 and realising what a bloody good playlist it actually is. *note to self: nostalgia blurs all memories Anyway, I decided to create a YouTube playlist of all the tracks on this compilation album and now I'm going to share it with you.  Two whole hours of 1980's music in the same order as the original playlist! You might like to subscribe to my YouTube channel too as I'm going to make some more compilation playlists to keep me from boredom and out of mischief  amuse me whilst I have some time off work. Enjoy! [popout:  http://goo.gl/rZinS ]

If one person needed to join in with Soundtrack To My Life , it's my friend Sam.  We have had interesting music chats in the past, share a love of vinyl and come from an era where Woolworths was the (only) record shop of choice.  Sam is neither a blogger nor a tweeter (I know ... in this day and age too!) although she did dabble in blogging about a year ago but real life events took precedence.  I'll leave a couple of links for you to read at the end of this post and you can pester her to take it back up again.  In the meantime, over to Sam.  ¨¨°º©©º°¨¨ Boney M - The Rivers Of Babylon This song just reminds me of being happy and being a kid.  It has lovely childhood memories associated with it of a great family holiday in Tunisia and having no worries, no stress and just enjoying being a child.  I hear it and I'm transported back to the 1970's [popout:  http://youtu.be/zdgMo7BjA0Y ] The Boomtown Rats - I Don't Like Monda...

Recently I have been road testing Soreen (formally known as "malt loaf" * insert nostalgic music and wavy screen here *) along with half of Blackburn and we're all convinced it's the best thing since sliced... Soreen toastie loaf.   Anyway, I have discovered the virtues of using Soreen to snack on at work.  Aside from it being completely scrummy, I'm the most popular person in my office thanks to my foresight of freezing some of my enormous supply of Soreen toastie loaf.  Now it seems that I have a never-ending supply of lunch-time goodies. Because Soreen Lunchbox Loaves  meet the Government's food-based nutritional standards they are great to use for a snack any time of the day.  I've also been hearing about toastie loaf for breakfast, lunch or supper (not all three on the same day... * cough *) and keeping the mini-loaves in bags for a mid-afternoon snack (for parents, not the kids). What I'd like you to do is share your healthy lunchbox...

My radio listening is a bit erratic to say the least.  My time in the car and who I share my office with determines which radio shows I listen to. I was working in another town yesterday and could afford to set off a little later than normal so I was listening to Radio 2 in the car.  I caught a ' Pause For Thought ' type chat between Chris Evans and Rev. Rob Gillion which made me smile.  It also made me think that it's always the simple ideas that work the best.   The theme was that we have more in common that we have differences and The Rev suggested that we should live by these rules set out in our nursery schools: Play fair Share everything Don't hit people Don't take things that are not yours Say you're sorry when you hurt someone Have biscuits and milk and take a nap in the afternoon When you go out into the world watch for traffic, hold hands and stick together Easy, yeah?  Shouldn't we all follow these rules?  I'm up for it!...

A short while ago I received a text from my husband.  We'd had our delivery of malt loaf goodies from Soreen HQ for the purpose of helping them promote some of their new products.  My mind flipped back to an email from their PR, Nicola, that said, " ... and you'll get a ton of product samples. "  She wasn't kidding! So, I tipped it all out and created a few gift boxes for the neighbours (I bet I get a nomination for Neighbour Of The Year now, or at least the posh Christmas cards with the gold edging) and went up and down the street giving it out.  I sent some round to my daughter's house and took some to work.  My popularity count has never been so high.  Everyone loved the retroness of it all and when I recommended toasting it, they all went wild! We've run a few taste tests and have declared the new banana mini-loaves the best thing ever invented in the 'healthy snack' world and the pre-sliced toastie loaf a little bit moreish (two...

Since I bought a good digital camera last year I've become a bit obsessed with having some of the best images turned into canvas prints.  Here are some of the images I've had printed out this year - all for very different reasons... (click 'em to big 'em) They look beautiful on canvas and I've made sure that they are displayed on their own on the wall as a 'statement piece'.  I'm also thinking of creating a collage-type canvas of pictures of my grandchildren as a present for someone at Christmas.   However, I'm now a bit obsessed by choosing images to print out especially as I am offered canvas prints to review from time to time ( keep the offers coming, guys... I don't mind ).  Sometimes I pick up the camera on a day out and try and to capture that perfect picture so that I can show it off on my wall.   But I followed a link on Twitter a short while ago which lead to an article on PetaPixel .  It was a discussion about...

Christmas is almost upon us and this year I'm getting quite excited.  Over the past few years, the build-up has been slightly muted because teenagers and grown-up children tend not to get too excited about the countdown.  Now that my grandchildren are at the age where they can get enthusiastic about Christmas, it is the perfect opportunity to be the best Nana in the world and arrange for them to send a message to Santa through the Portable North Pole website. I organised this for Jake a couple of years back.  He was at that stage in life where he was questioning the logistics of the delivery of presents but still wanted to keep the magic alive for just another year.  It did the trick!  All I had to enter was his name, the town we live in, what he really wanted for Christmas and also to upload a photo of him.   That was the clincher, right there! It's worth bookmarking the website now so that you can see when their new video is live (you can als...

Kate is back on the Listography trail again and this time she is asking us what we would like to be reincarnated as (click the image to the left go to her link post) .  Yeah, I thought it was a bit weird but it has got me thinking and that's always a dangerous move.  I don't believe in an afterlife so you don't need to worry about me haunting you or being your guardian angel, however... if I did get the chance to grace the Earth again this is possibly where you might find me. ISS Astronaut I almost wished myself back as Felix Baumgartner but I've seen what other mad shit he's got up to in the past.  The 'Live Jump' from the edge of space was awesome but leaping off buildings and statues, Point Break style, is just a step too far for me.  However, being an International Space Station Astronaut... can you imagine seeing sights as fucking amazing as this out of your office window every. single. day. of your working life?   Simon le Bon...

Seriously... if you're going to share an iconic film moment then share the right one. We've got another three years to wait.   Look! Plenty of time to invent that hoverboard! The 80's were MY years.  What more can I say?  I'm an 80's nerd!

A while back, whilst lunch time browsing in a charity shop, I found this recipe book.  Nothing special but I recognised it immediately as one that my mum used to have.  It is a proper 1970's cook book with no new-fangled techniques.  When we cleared her house after she died, my sister and I wanted to keep all the "family" books but we were both moving house ourselves at the time and attempting to clear out rather than accumulate.  Needless to say, a lot of childhood memories were passed on to new homes.  Just for sentimentality reasons, I had to buy this book from the charity shop and the Golden Girl behind the till charged me just one English pound.  Since then it has sat on my recipe book shelf, collecting dust, with me looking guiltily at it every time I walk past it.  But I smile because it reminds me of Mum. Jake is fascinated with baking at the moment but his attention span is next to zero thanks to his ADHD.  He is a starte...

I spotted a tweet yesterday from @WalkTheLinesLDN  which linked to this picture (Mark's book looks amazing, by the way - a walk along the London Underground - overground - passing each station on the way - Amazon link if you're buying me a present here -  Walk The Lines ) . You can find a large version of the picture here  http://i.imgur.com/MQ4Or.jpg and a bit of googling sent me to the original blog post on Look For Longer . There are apparently more than 70 London Underground stations on this picture.  I got about ten at first glance.  They are very cleverly incorporated into the drawing and some are more obvious than others.  When you find them, stick them in the comments and let me know what part of the picture you saw them in. My first spots were: Barbican (Barbie & Ken) Lambeth (the lamb in a bath) Elephant and Castle (sign on the pub) Knightsbridge (knight and horse crossing the bridge) Shepherds Bush (shepherd stood next...

This year I have enjoyed supporting  CLIC Sargent on my blog.  Whilst it is the UK's leading children's cancer charity, it's a charity very close to my heart for many reasons - mainly because this charity (then known as the Malcolm Sargent Fund ) supported our family when my daughter was diagnosed with Neuroblastoma back in 1992.   A while back I shared a short story with you called " Fancy A Brew? "  I had written it especially for Tetley and their book " You, Me and a Cup of Tea " which has been published to raise funds for CLIC Sargent.   The book was released on 1st October 2012 and Tetley actually chose to include my story in the book (it's entry #20) The book includes 175 heart-warming stories about tea drinking or sharing a special cup of tea with a loved one.  Dozens of celebrities have also written short stories for the book and, as I flick through my copy, I can see entries from Richard Wilson, Christine Hamilton (on the pag...

I find all sorts of mad webpages through various means (I'm looking at you b3ta and StumbleUpon ) and I'm not sure if it's representative of my current search history but a lot of yoga and diet pages seem to be thrown up (no pun intended) from all sides at the moment.  The General Motors Diet managed to find its way onto my screen and I'm fascinated and horrified all at the same time.  The idea behind the diet is that the food eaten burns more calories that they give to the body in calorific value (source: GM Diet Works ) and the target weight loss is 10-17 lb IN A WEEK which sounds like my kind of diet.  Let's read on... Rule 1:  You must abstain from all alcohol for the first seven days. Oohh that's going to be DIFFICULT.  Powering through... Rule 2:  You must drink 10-15 glasses of water each day. I can't find out what size glasses.  Shot glasses = easy peasy.  Pint glasses = maybe needing to sit on the loo for the full seven...

I've just seen this tweet in my Twitter timeline... ... so I had a bit of a scout around t'internet. The Social Buzz Awards are open to all social media/digital agencies, creative agencies, media agencies and a whole host of other businesses and individuals who are based in the UK and work within the social media field.  The nominations (albeit paid entry) are judged by a panel and judgement is based on:  clear strategic thinking innovation effectiveness tangible results creativity and you can see Mum Panel's finalist announcement on the Social Buzz Live Blog (scroll down to 3:37) .  But why am I telling you this? I'm telling you this because I was honoured to be involved in the #dosomethingyummy campaign that has earned Mum Panel their nomination.   Back in February of this year I played a major role assisting with "connecting bloggers".  Working with Mum Panel , I coordinated a month-long creative writing programme that rais...

Occasionally I find a blog that has the perfect mix of words and pictures. Then you hear the owner of that blog read out one of their own posts and understand even more why their words and pictures completely fit in your world.  Ruth's " Twitter is like... " post made me nod along when I first read it but after hearing her read it out at BritMums Live , in her soft lilt, it made it more of a beautiful piece of prose.  This is Ruth's fabulous  Soundtrack To My Life and I had a giggle at the story behind the Josh Rouse one. ¨¨°º©©º°¨¨ U2 - The Sweetest Thing When I was at high school I had to go on a two week work experience placement. I ended up stuck in the basement of a graphic designer's office for a fortnight, sticking pictures onto pieces of cardboard and making coffee for the staff. This song was on the radio CONSTANTLY (along with Perfect 10 by the Beautiful South) and I can't hear it without it bringing back memories of that time.  [popo...