Thursday 21 April 2016

カラオケ

According to Google, that's Karaoke in Japanese. It could actually mean chin whisker but unless I have any Japanese-speaking readers, none of us will ever know. I would actually love to learn Japanese one day so I can grill the sushi chef about the urban legend that you can't eat sushi on a Monday OR when pregnant. What do they really think? What do Japanese people do? Shall we have a plum wine together? Konichiwah!
The other week, during my break from Onefinedaily, I helped to organise my best friend's hen. Everything went v well, apart from when I scraped the icing off 5 cupcakes and ate 2 giant gingerbreads, breaking my diet and burning my throat with the sugar shock. It wasn't about me me me though, it was about the bride-to-be and I think she had a great time. For the evening, we booked the smashing Rockaoke whose website is a quite bewildering mess of name-dropping in very very small font. You will be none the wiser from visiting it which is a shame because trust me, they are worth the money. They send a three or four piece band to your event, along with a singer/compere, and two microphones and stands with ipads. Then, it's basically just like normal karaoke. You choose your song from a huge list, tell the compere, who gets the lyrics up on the ipad, and then you just sing to the cheering crowd, with the band behind you. It is a liberating and super fun experience and not just for the exhibitionists. Even the wall flowers dropped their "no, I can't, I really can't"s and were up there doing their best Dolly Parton. If you are organising a party, I can't recommend them highly enough.

Tuesday 19 April 2016

A Clean Car is a Happy Car

Is that the right saying? Well whatever, my mum came to visit the other day and offered to go out in the torrential rain and clean my car herself, risking her freshly backcombed Jetson hair- this must have been an emergency. I am not one of those people who prides themselves on a clean and/or tidy car. But I think I had let it go too far this time. One of my nieces recently complained that it smelled disgusting in there. I told her her mummy had just got it, done a big fart, and then hopped out again. Ho ho ho no-one likes to think of their mum doing a trump do they?!? She hasn't said it again since!!! Anyway, I felt like I had disappointed my mum so much that I booked a same day at-home car clean. The guy who came was just amazing - he and his pal arrived within an hour and spent an age cleaning my car  in and out. It looks like new- I don't mean that in any way other than literal. You have never seen such a radical transformation outside Extreme Home Makeover. If you want his number, let me know in the comments section, or if you know me in real life, message me any way you like.

Monday 18 April 2016

Onefineoccasionally

Sorry for my recent absence readers. I'm sure you've not spent the last couple of weeks refreshing your Safari waiting, hoping, yearning for a blog post but still...
Let's get going again though and pretend the break never happened. First up is a beautiful home website called This Modern Life. I have bought a few things from there in the last couple of years, and all of them have been really good buys. They have some of my favourite kids' makes like  Corby Tindersticks , Goodnight Light and Ferm Living although why anyone would spend 80 quid on a kid's duvet cover is beyond me.

If any of my network asks what I want for my bday this year, I really really really want one of the pineapple night lights. Can you imagine anything funner to wake up to in the morning? Like a Pina Colada right there on your bedside table. Without the calories and furry feeling on your teeth. Perfection.

Saturday 16 April 2016

The Weekend Edition

The Weekend Edition is back with a smashing prize! The winner this week gets to pay for a flight to Israel and carry out the much-coveted role of Fine family au pair for the next 10 days. Lots of free time from 8pm - 7am. Choice of top or bottom bunk in shared dorm. And pocket money made up of chocolate coins left over from Chanukah 2002. Fastest fingers first! You know the rules- first person to name the famous person AND tell me why they were in the news over the past 7 days wins.
Here goes:











Monday 4 April 2016

Whatsapp Wisdom

I can barely remember the tumbleweed phone days before Whatsapp. Sure, we used to BBM, but it definitely wasn't as good. And now, not a day goes by without being added onto another group. Its like the modern day three-way phone call isn't it? Speaking of which the other day I did one of those with my two best friends and it was AMAZING. I highly recommend it - I know it's basically the same as a work conference call just not on loud speaker and without the free drinks and biscuits, but still, it was so cool.
Anyway, back to Whatsapp. One of my longstanding groups is with my sister and two of her wise and gentle friends. The other day, whilst lamenting my husband's need to ask me where every single thing is in my house, without even bother to look for it himself first, one of the girls said her husband could be a useless good for nothing too. She said her problem with him is that he always claims to need the toilet for a wee plus when he is doing a job he doesn't want to do. But she has found a winning way to make sure these toilet trips are curtailed. She always makes him leave his phone behind. She said this drastically reduces the trip. It goes from being film length to presumably just poo length. Who says romance is dead? Not in my household! I'm sorry to start the week with a kind of depressing post. Back to glamour tomorrow I promise.


Sunday 3 April 2016

The Weekend Edition

There was a brand new winner of The Weekend Edition last week. She guessed not only the correct celebrity, but also the news story. She is now enjoying a sunday night supper with her husband, booked by me, paid for by him. The prizes are getting better and better aren't they? Get your thinking cap on, and this sort of prize of a lifetime could be yours.

Here goes....



Friday 1 April 2016

Mid-year santa

I am in the midst of the misery that is packing for a holiday with very young children. I know I sound spoilt but you KNOW it's true. I get 1/20th of the suitcase to stuff with my 2003 Primark kaftans and gone off suncream. The rest of the space is taken up with everything under the (hopefully) sun for the kids. And when we get there, do they know the holiday lie in rules? They do not. I CAN'T WAIT. 
Anyway, whilst we are away we will be visiting 11 of our 17, soon to be 18, nieces and nephews.  I always try to take shamndry gifts with for them but with that number, it's ummmm expensive/impossible/space-less. So I think that this year what I am going to do is take them a bigger gift for all the family from the amazing site Toyella
They have all sorts of cool stuff, and hardly any technicolor plastic which is a nice change. I am thinking of getting this gorgeous sushi set and this set of v fun building block things


And if any of them happen to ask what we would like, please say one of these for the garden.