Personal Irritating Numbers

My rant this week is passwords and PINs.

I’ve now got so many I have had to write them down, and doesn’t that defeat the point?

Wouldn’t it be easier if we all had numbers from birth that are our PINs and passwords for life?

One person - one number.

Easy.

Hang on a minute, did I just fall into the trap?!

Crikey, they’re clever.

Knobs and Knockers

I recently spent a weekend with a good friend and his partner in their beautiful cottage near Burnham Market in North Norfolk and am utterly smitten by their home.

Besides the brilliant cooking abilities and general welcoming ambiance, the thing I found amazing was the balance of old and new and the attention to detail found throughout their house.

 Admittedly the owner is a well known (and brilliant) TV set designer so maybe it would have been more surprising if it wasn’t as good as it was, but I do get a lot of pleasure from looking at well chosen, well made, well fitted switch plates, light switches, door knobs and escutcheons.

Is that a little sad?

Don’t answer that.

It’s taken 12 years to get the house where it is today, but I would say they are 12 years extremely well spent.

As my house has taken a back seat for far too long, I found it very inspiring and immediately logged onto my favorite hardware website

www.willowandstone.com

I love this site. It has the feel of a proper old hardware store and although it’s not quite the same as whiling away an hour or two in an actual store, it’s the closest thing that you'll find on line.

Whatever you want, whatever era you’re buying for – it’s all there.

I dare you to have a look and not want something…..

The App-liance of Science

So my meeting with the company who are designing my App went well – it was very exciting to go through all the ideas that will enable people to put room designs together with more expertise and confidence.

It’s really important to me that it should be a useful and use-able design tool, and not a gimmick which has no use after the novelty wears off, and we’re working towards that with gusto.

I am always interested to hear what ideas you think would help make it even better so please let me know what you would like to see, and what sort of thing you would find useful and we’ll try to include it.

There's a Mice in my Hice

 I live in a very old cottage in Wiltshire and nothing really surprises me any more, but even I had to raise an eyebrow when my pantry ceiling electrocuted me last Thursday.

The ceiling was evidently quite damp and when I put my hand on it to check how bad it was, the leaking electricity from the ceiling light earthed through me.

Needless-to-say the eyebrow raising wasn’t intentional.

My brilliant local plumber came round to have a look and found that a mouse had chewed through a soon-to-be-replaced plastic water pipe.

There doesn’t seem to be long term damage, except to my wallet and the fact that it made a long day an awful lot longer.

The moral of this tale is to never underestimate the power of a single mouse and think about the application of the materials you use in a project….

Old house+plastic pipes+mouse=potential flood and a big repair bill.

How many café lattes does it take?

In these days of make-do-and-mend, saving a bit of money here and there doesn’t seem very easy, and perhaps wanting to make small improvements to your home might seem a bit of a luxury, but here’s a thing…..

I’ve found that I’ve fallen into the coffee-in-the-morning-on-the-way-to-work trap that has seeped into our lives over the past few years and I’ve been totting up the cost – it’s a lot!!

On the basis that an average cafe latte costs around £2.50, a weeks worth amounts to £12.50; a month £24; a year is £288!!!

Right, so if that wasn’t compelling enough, add in the odd sandwich, cake and biscuit and we’re probably looking at £300.

Q. What you could do with £300?

A. A lot more than you could with a bucket full of café latte.

Think about it.

I’ve moved!

After the run away love and success of my blog on the UKTV website, it seems only right and natural that it should now be on my own site, so here I am!

So what’s been happening?

Interiors 2011 at Birmingham NEC took place at the end of January and it was a good one!

I launched my range of drop down TV screens with Chameleon AV, which look amazing, and have been told that they are already being featured in Harrods, which is nice.

They’re a brilliant and affordable solution for you that want to conceal your TV, and let’s face it, the bigger they get the more of an eyesore they become (unless of course you’re watching UKTV Home…..obviously…).

Take a look:

 chameleonav.co.uk