Working from Home

With working from home here to stay as government guidelines continue, why not spend some time revamping and transforming your home office space to not only be functional, but beautiful too. We chatted to Home improvement brand VELUX who have joined forces with leading interior designers Whinnie Williams and Kierra Campbell of Poodle & Blonde to bring you their 9 top tips for styling your home office.

1.Ceilings are often the most forgotten surface in a room. By painting or wallpapering them in bold, fun colours and prints it immediately adds interest and makes the space feel bigger.

2. If you want to work from home and have a desk set up, nothing will aide productivity more than having natural light. Always position your desk near a window, and to really maximise on daylight from above, consider adding VELUX roof windows to transform a space by flooding it with light.

3. When styling surfaces always do it in odd numbers. A trio of product is a great start and feels exciting on the eye.

4. Lighting really can make any space feel magical, so think about the interiors in your home to help open up your space. Light-coloured walls and furniture help to reflect the natural light from your roof windows, creating a lighter, brighter living space.

5. When wanting to bring print into your home play around with scale. Pairing a large scale print with a smaller delicate one ensures they don't fight against each other. Also, bringing a third print in will look better when styling than two.

6. Shopping vintage and antique, then mixing it up with modern pieces is a great way to elevate a space and make it feel clever and unique.

7. Curtains are money well spent. They give texture and warmth to your styling. They are great for bringing in colour - we always suggest floor length.

8. Cushions are great little room refreshers. If you’re tired of your sofa they are the easiest way to give your space a fresh feel... and more is more!

9. When choosing artwork go big. Large art is such an easy way to fill a space... and think outside the box! Frame up old kitchen tea towels, wallpaper, paint your own abstract print on some MDF or even pin up large roll of fabric.

Beauty NEWS

HYDRATE & PLUMP

The latest launch from RoC Skincare is their Hydrate & Plump range, the brands’ first ever collection that celebrates the wonder ingredient, Hyaluronic Acid, in a perfect 3-piece collection. The magic trio made up of SPF Moisturiser (£35.99), Eye Gel-Cream (£24.99) and Serum Capsules (£35.99) providing the ultimate solution for fighting fine lines and wrinkles as recommended by leading dermatologists.

www.rocskincare.co.uk

WHIP IT UP

Sassy Shop Wax’s gorgeous whipped soaps, are just the thing for a little self-indulgence. Simply cleanse from your hands to your toes in a range of scents, which you’ll be sure to fall in love with. With over 30 whipped soaps to choose from including; I Love You, with its scents of flirtatious berry, cherry, blackcurrant leaf, intertwined with Turkish Rose and enchanting Jasmine, and a sweet and sophisticated base of Patchouli, Vanilla, as well as the Blonde Moment Whipped Soap, and the Antique Bookstore Whipped Soap (yes, there’s really a scent for that). Priced at £7.99 each and available from

www.sassyshopwax.com/collections NAIL IT!

Change your colour as often as your mood with NEW Revlon Ultra HD SNAP! Nail Colour. The one- coat, full coverage, quick-dry nail polish – no base or topcoat needed. The clean, 100% vegan polish is made with more than 78% natural ingredients, with the caring and strengthening complex of hexanal, shea butter and green botanicals (like spinach, avocado and green tea) leaving nails feeling smooth, strong and protected. Available exclusively at Superdrug RRP £7.99.

YOGA HAPPY

Hannah Barrett is one of the UK’s leading online yoga and meditation teachers and now she has released her first book, Yoga Happy, she encourages you to incorporate key disciplines, thoughts and actions into your everyday life. Yoga Happy is an essential companion to help you through life, whether you’re a complete yoga beginner or wanting to deepen your home practice. In this beautiful, full-colour book you will find everything you need to build your inner strength, enhance your yoga practice, and help you find calm, happiness and the resilience to navigate the modern world. With short, illustrated yoga sequences adapted for all abilities, breathing techniques, meditations and other proven mindful practices, this book will nourish and support your mind and body. Available from all good bookshops RRP £20.

How Journaling Can Help our Mental Health

Mental health problems are experienced differently by everyone and are therefore subjective, but there are some methods that have been shown to help us address and manage our feelings, and also help us to feel more positive about the future. Lockdown allowed many of us to take up new hobbies and pursue existing interests, but journaling was one activity in particular that the nation has maintained interest in - largely due to the wellbeing benefits that it can offer.

Nostalgia increases our happiness

Looking back at past memories and life moments has become commonplace over the course of the past year and a half, offering us a form of escapism from the pandemic. And while reflecting on the past can be an intellectual activity, nostalgia is also an emotional one. Memory is about recalling the facts of a past event; nostalgia is about recalling how it felt to be there. A 2013 study published in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin found that engaging in nostalgia led people to feel more optimistic about the future. Nostalgia is also related to higher self-esteem, happiness, and feelings of closeness to loved ones engaging in past memories evoke these feelings for us, boosting our overall mood.

The impact of journaling on our mental health

The act of writing in a journal to record your innermost thoughts yields a whole host of benefits when it comes to our mental health. It can better our mood, increase our sense of wellbeing, and even lead to better working memory. In some cases, journaling is "prescribed" as a way to reduce PTSD symptoms or to help people suffering from depression and anxiety. However, you don't have to be suffering to benefit from journaling - any time spent writing your thoughts helps your brain to get better at regulating your emotions. And a biography is like a journal on steroids!

Self-reflection is key to personal growth

If there's one overarching condition of modern life and one we can all relate to - it's busyness. We move from email to email or meeting to meeting with little time to pause and think about our lives and their meaning — a situation that's only been made worse by the distractions of smartphones. Yet Harvard researchers have found that making time for selfreflection is a crucial component of learning. Writing a biography is the ultimate exercise of self-reflection, as you aren't just thinking about a day's work, but your life as a whole.

Midlife Madness

Over the past few years, even before the days of the pandemic which has certainly increased it, we have all moved to doing much more of our shopping online. For many, online grocery shopping is a frequent occurrence and increasingly much of our other shopping seems to be done on line. If I’m honest I go to town less and less as there are fewer and fewer shops – if you take out charity shops and pound stores.

But one of the essential elements of online shopping is that everything you order simply must be delivered. That is something in my experience that has its highs and lows.

On the plus side we live in a pretty safe place so behind the bin, inside the back gate, behind a big plant pot all work pretty well. We have also found a few parcels which look to have been thrown a distance into the back garden but as long as they aren’t breakable I’ve no quibble with that. Frankly I’d rather retrieve items from our garden, even if left in slightly unorthodox places than have to trek to the post office!

When it comes to groceries the biggest issue I remember is the substitutes and occasionally the amounts – you know 2 dozen bananas instead of 2, or a white sliced loaf instead of a multi seeded, whole-wheat, sourdough –rarely have I seen the substitutes to be so extreme but you get the drift.

When it comes to the delivery though you have to be in to receive groceries so while I may have wished the delivery driver could step inside and put them all in the cupboards, I have never needed to have a garden treasure hunt to find the shopping.

Our greatest near miss with deliveries was when a special (aka very expensive) item was to be delivered in a onehour time slot and it was the ‘Christmas Maker’ present for the grandson and we had been entrusted with receiving it. Yes, a weighty responsibility! during the said hour when I had a text from a friend cancelling an arranged meeting and saying she’d pop over to drop off pressies. Problem was I hadn’t got hers (the arranged meet was following day so plenty of leeway). Well of course this new information somehow bumped the important job out of our brains as we hot-footed it to the car to go and buy gifties. Yes, you’ve guessed it barely a kilometre from the house we got the text that they’d tried to deliver it and taken it away again! We quickly did a u turn ready to accost any van driver we saw but to no avail!

Despair – we might have spoiled Christmas! But all’s well that ends well and it was delivered the following day (Christmas Eve).

The other deliveries we have found problematic are takeaways. Now when we order from our favourite curry house all works well but we tried a Chinese restaurant that we’d used before but not so much. On the particular night we rang, they said they were really busy and that it would be 3 hours – yes 3 hours. But we ordered on the app and it was only an hour! Sneaky right! It was just over the hour when I heard a car door and went outside just to see a box of Chinese in someone’s hand as they knocked at the house next door! In full on panic mode I shouted to the deliverer that that was for us. No! He replied it’s for number 12! To be honest I was ready to rugby tackle but he said he’d check and sure enough it was ours. Now that was close shave.

I also had a very confusing conversation on the phone from a driver dropping off a box of wine, important delivery or what, and said he couldn’t find the house – a long confusing conversation followed until we managed to establish he was at the right number and street in the wrong town!

I guess like anything new there are skills we need to learn, remembering we are waiting for a delivery, identifying the hiding places in our garden and ensuring we establish which town we live in!