Home Interiors - Jimbob Art

I recently stumbled across this awesome designer who creates these really fun animal plates and other items with hand drawn illustrations printed onto them,  I have fallen for them hard. I think the plates  would look so much fun hung on a wall in a little collection, although I would happily use them every day too if I didn't think it would ruin them!
You can find them all on Wolf & Badger

What do you think?

Introducing Muzikool!

Morning ladies! A few of you will have noticed me mentioning Muzikool on Twitter or Facebook last week, and no doubt most of you are still wondering what the heck I am on about...well here is a post to introduce Muzikool properly to you all.

So most of you know Spotify, which is a free music streaming site, Muzikool is similar to Spotify in the sense that you can listen to chart music for free through your computer or other internet connected device. 

But there are a few big differences:

1. With Muzikool the music video is also streamed alongside the track. I love music videos and often like to have them on in the back ground when I am working. I usually use the music channel but find it repetitive and I hate all the adverts (that goes for Spotify too!)

2. No adverts! Muzikool doesn’t have any audible adverts during or in between the tracks! There is sometimes google ads on the video, the same as there would be on YouTube

3. You can choose the mood of your musical journey. The Mood Map is one of the special features on Muzikool. You can adjust the chart from upset and sad round to exciting and wild! Therefore tailoring the type of music you want to listen to. The automatic music selector will tailor the music to your choices and have the music gradually move between the moods so it won’t jump about in tempo and volume.

4. The other Music Map is the Artists Map. This gives you the 6 most popular artists of the moment and you can chart your journey through their tracks, in a similar way to the Mood Map.

5. You can choose a decade of music to listen to, or multiple decades! Meaning if you don’t fancy listening to something new, you could choose to just listen to 80’s tracks, (or any other decade!)

Still Confused? Check out this quick video and it’ll all make a bit more sense.

Muzikool from Muzikool on Vimeo.

The site is on an invite only basis, so why not sign up today and get your free invite!

*This is a sponsored post, but all words and opinions are my own*

Recipe Review - BakingMad.com

Today I bring you a recipe and site review for BakingMad.com! When the lovely PR girls got in touch and asked if would like to try out some of the recipes and the products they use I thought it might be a bit of fun, and something a bit different for you, all my lovely readers out there. So when they sent me this parcel of fun baking items I had to decide which of the 100's of recipes off their site to make with them.

The most obvious thing that came to mind was cupcakes!! I decided to use this recipe for Crown Cupcakes. But altered it so they weren't just plain vanilla cupcakes... they were Pastel Rainbow Cupcakes!! Well I had to use all those pretty food colourings, didn't I? Then Jon could have some fun helping me decorate them too!

Now, I'm not really a baker so this recipe had to be pretty simple! So this is what I managed to bake in the end! We did double the quantity as there were lots of us home to eat them afterwards. 

Pretty aren't they!

The ingredients and recipe for the basic cupcake on on the link above.

Here is what I did:

 Mixed the sugar and butter, till smooth

Slowly added the flour

Keep mixing till it's all nice and combined, add vanilla extract - or another extract you fancy!

Then the fun part. 

Split the mixture between 4 bowls and add drops of food colouring to each, mix and add more until you get desired colour. I kept one plain, until I found some red dye in the cupboard and added that to the last bowl, just to add more fun to the mix!

Place a little of each colour in each cupcake wrapper, and gently shake the whole tray so the mixture settles into the moulds and flattens out. Then pop in the oven.

 tick, tick, tick...20 minutes later...ta da freshly baked coloured cupcakes now to decorate!

 Some got blue icing treatment and some snowflake toppers c/o JustBake.co.uk (there will be a review of them this week) others got traditional butterflied with butter icing.

 Others got butter icing frosting and sprinkles or grated chocolate flakes. The dark chocolate flakes are from a caramel and sea salt bar I got sent by Miki from Miki's Scrapbook and were so tasty!!

 And this is what they looked like inside - the photo doesn't do them justice, they were a bit brighter than they look. And oh so yummy!

Bakingmad.com has literally 100's of other baking recipes and I will be trying out a few more on the lead up to Christmas

*I was sent the items free of charge in exchange for this post, but all opinions are my own*

Car Hire Market - Cheap Car Hire in Spain

Although the summer is well and truly over it doesn't mean that the 'taking a holiday' season is over, in fact as I can't deal with the heat I often find holidaying in Autumn or even Winter much better. So on that front I thought I would do a quick post about a great site where you can hire cars for your holiday. Me and Jon like to see lots of places when we travel to new countries, and working out public transport (especially when it is in a foreign language) can sometimes be near to impossible, so we have found hiring our own vehicle a great idea. It gives you the freedom to roam around your chosen destination, see the attractions and sites that are further afield than the major cities, and work on your own time frame.
Finding the right company to hire a car with can be difficult, but we have found that Car Hire Market are great for cheap car hire especially in Spain. They collect all the best hire companies on one site meaning you can find exactly what you want and need. They have so many places where you can pick up a car all across the country, so it doesn't matter where in Spain you are staying you will be able to collect a car close by. Plus they have such a huge range of cars to chose from there will be something that will fit any budget or any size of family. Prices start from around £15 a day, which if you are a family travelling is probably cheaper than a day on public transport! Plus with their pick up and drop off service you don't need to return the car to the same destination as where you started, you can drive across the country and drop the vehicle off at your final destination instead, making your holiday work the way you want it to! Here are just a few of the cars you could be driving: 

 And it isn't just Spain they cover, you could hire a car from over 178 different countries.  Has anyone else hired a car recently?

in association with CarHireMarket.com

Review - Baker Days Cake

Isn't it amazing when you receive cake in the mail?!?! Yep I did say that, last week I got this in the mail, and at first wasn't sure what the heck it was, I hadn't ordered anything and it wasn't my birthday - but lets go with it...

 when I opened it up I found this!

 CAKE!!!! And a Daisy cake no less! I was sent this by Baker Days. It's like interflora but for cakes instead of flowers. You can choose a cake, or have one custom designed for you, and send it to anyone in the UK. Plus if you order by 2pm you can have next day delivery. It arrives in this great little tin, with a little pack of balloons and party whistles, it's a party in a box!

 Now I must say I was a little sceptical at how good a cake could be considering it had been sent through the mail, but I was amazing at how moist and tasty it was. It is clear that the cake really was freshly made as it was really soft and probably far more moist than most of the ones in the supermarket. It was a chocolate cake with a chocolate cream filling and this beautifully designed icing covering.

If you fancy sending someone special one of these cakes you can order them online here, prices start from £14.99 delivered. You can find them on Facebook and Twitter too.

Review - Arty Harty Personalised Print

When I started reviewing more home wear items I was contacted by Jo who runs a design company online called Arty Harty. She asked if I would like a personalised print for our home to review, and after checking out her site and see how beautiful her work was I quickly accepted her generous offer. As I didn't have any big occasions coming up I wasn't sure what to have put on the print, but Jo asked if I had anything to commemorate my wedding and I realised other than photos we didn't. So Jo offered to do a personalised print to commemorate my wedding to Jon.

Jo was great to chat to about the print, she asked me lots of questions about what I would like the print to look like and details to include. As we had a black and white wedding I said I would like it in shades of grey, then I gave her all our wedding details and she produced a beautiful print, especially for us!

Here it is! It is hung above our TV in our bedroom and we both love it.

The print is really high quality and came framed in this nice black frame, so it was all ready to hang. I didn't tell Jon it was coming so it was a nice surprise for him when it was delivered, it is something we will both cherish for a long time.

Here are a few other examples of her work.

She also recently started producing these great 3D pieces for the home.

So what do you think of personalised art for your home? What would you have on yours?

I think the personalised prints would make a great gift for a newly married couple or a new baby! And starting at just £18 it is really affordable and well priced.

If you want to keep up to date with Arty Hearty you can check them out on Facebook or Twitter

Review - How I Wonder Personalised Stationary

Most of you know that I am a complete Snail Mail lover! So I often send postcards and penpal letters to my lovely ladies around the world, that means I am always on the look out for new stationary or pretty papers on which I can write. So when 'How I Wonder' dropped me an email last week and asked if I would like some of my own personalised stationary I jumped at the chance. I chose their Forest Friends design as it has little bunnies on it! And here it is, all personalise with my address!

They also sent me the 2 little notebooks as well, which I love and will come in useful as I always carry notebooks for list making and random thoughts!

I love how pretty this stationary is, and I cannot wait to send it out on it's travels into the world.

Here are the other great items they have in their store, it's not just the stationary! Their designs are put on lamp shades, cushions and now a range of bowls and plates! Take a look.

I am seriously in love with these last 2 bowls! I would love a few of them myself!

What do you think? Have you heard of How I Wonder before?

Anyone else into snail mail? If you fancy swapping letters drop me a message, always on the lookout for more pen pals.

And if you want to know more about them you can find them on twitter!