Regular Wash ‘n’ Wax

This may seem like a staggeringly obvious piece of advice, but you’d be surprised how many people never wash their car. This sort of negligence only means you have to take it for a proper, professional job more regularly. A drive-through car wash every few weeks is the easiest way to maintain an attractive appearance. But try doing it yourself one Saturday per month – it’s cheaper, and keeps you in touch with your pride and joy in a way no automatic wash can. It’s also a lot more detailed.

Keep a coat of wax on your car. It is paramount to maintaining a healthy vehicle. A properly applied coat of wax will not only keep your car nice and shiny, it also functions as a protective barrier between airborne debris and your car’s surface. If bugs and other dirt hit your car, it will simply embed itself in the coat of wax, which means it’ll be all the easier to clean.

Tyre Conditioner

Ropey tyres are one of the tell-tale signs of a neglected car. When tyres look dry and faded, they add years to the overall appearance of the car. Apply a coat of tyre conditioner after you wash the car and your tyres will shine with that “new car” look.

Plastic Sealant

When the plastic moulding or trim starts to look faded and grey, it’s really obvious. To stay on top of this ageing process, stick a little plastic or rubber sealant on your trim, blacken it up and hey presto – your vehicle’s had a facelift.

Detail Spray

Unsightly bird mess or other one-off dirt ‘events’ may not be enough to make it worth washing your car again. Instead, keep a bottle of detailing spray and a microfibre towel in your car to take care of it. Fingerprints and dust are also easily dealt with using detail spray.

Leather Conditioner

The inside needs to be tended to if you want to maintain an overall impression of newness. Cracked, faded leather will age your car like nothing else, so condition your leather using a good leather conditioner. It will moisturize, reduce fading and cracking, and protect the leather from UV rays, making it last longer – and look newer.

This is a featured guest post.

Photoworld is part of Europe’s largest photo company, CeWe (pronounced See Wee) Color, a company with over 50 years experience in perfecting the process of producing the finest quality personalised photo products.

We are based in Warwick near Royal Leamington Spa, where we have a state of the art production facility printing millions of photo products every year.  We have won numerous awards over the years for our beautiful products and continue to innovate and push the boundaries within the photo industry every day.

Our absolute focus is ensuring that every single order produced by Photoworld meets our extremely high quality standards to ensure the finished item puts the biggest smile on the recipients face possible!

Personalised iPhone Case

I think it’s all too easy in this day and age to ‘forget’ about printing our photos; we share them on social media and store them on discs etc but so many get forgotten about, so many memories stored away! What better way to help you get your prints to life than to win a £25 voucher!!

Photo Acrylic Blocks

I just love these acrylic blocks and think I must get one for Father’s Day with my little ones in for Daddy! It would look perfect on his desk at work!

XL CEWE PHOTOBOOK

Another great idea is to make up photobooks of all your photos, saves all that time you’d spend sticking them in an album and they look really great too! Take a look at the Photoworld website for lots more ideas

To enter this giveaway just complete the rafflecopter below – Good luck xx

a Rafflecopter giveaway

WIN a GOTZ Precious Day Doll worth £60 from Petalina, the online retailer with dolls for every age and stage. 

Petalina is the largest retailer of dolls and accessories in the UK, selling hundreds of high quality dolls from many different brands, carefully selected from around the world.

The perfect shopping destination for children with the dolly gene, Petalina is home to beautiful and loveable dolls for every occasion and age. Doll lovers will find brands like the award winning chic but quirky vanilla scented French Corolle dolls, the ultra cool Kidz ‘n’ Cats and Gotz dolls, which are dressed to impressed, A Girl for All Time range whose Victorian and Tudor dolls give young minds a history lesson while they play and the realistic Miaculti Babies to love and care for.

In addition to dolls, shoppers will find everything to make a doll feel at home; dolls furniture, changing tables and mats, car seats, travel cots and even tea sets.

To celebrate a new selection of summer dolls and accessories arriving at Petalina we are running a competition to win a gorgeous Precious Day Doll. The lucky winner can choose from one of three beautiful  dolls. Each doll has closing eyes and long hair. They are soft bodied but firm enough to stand on their own whilst remaining tactile and cuddly. Standing 46cms high they are suitable for children aged 4 years and above.

Visit Petalina at www.petalina.co.uk and make sure you check out its great new loyalty point scheme.

Petalina are giving away a GOTZ Precious Day Doll worth £60; the winner can choose one of the three from the below photo!

Winner can choose one of these three dolls!

This is such a beautiful prize; just enter via the below rafflecopter and GOOD LUCK xxx

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Vanquis help people repair bad credit; They provide credit cards to people who may have been turned down for credit elsewhere providing them a sensible way to stay in control of money.

Vanquis are a UK based company that offer credit cards starting with an easy to manage credit limit – between £150-£1,000 which can increase up to £3,000 providing you pay off all your credit as and when required.

I would definitely consider getting a credit card with a lower limit; I often find myself struggling at certain times of the month and  charges can get quite high if I happen to go overdrawn; I try not to do that but sometimes it is just unavoidable so it would be great to have that option of an extra few hundred pounds each month if I needed it.

When you have a bad credit rating it is very difficult to get credit anywhere and people can often get themselves in trouble and pay extortionate amount of interest on things like pay-day loans, loan sharks etc so for people to have this safe, reliable option I think is a great thing!

Vanquis first registed in 2002 and have today helped over 1.8 million customers, they also have a  UK call centre! Applying online is simple and easy and takes just 5 minutes and a decision can be given within a minute of receiving your application. You will be free to pay off the minum amount each month or the full amount it’s entirely up to you!

Check out the Vanquis website for more information.

This post is sponsored by Vanquis

Lots of lovely 3M Post-it’s

We were sent lots of lovely 3M Post-it’s for our challenge and of course the all important pinata!

Pinata we had to decorate

When it first arrived I had absolutely no idea what to do with it to be quite honest and then I saw what Red Ted Art had done with theirs and had a little chat with Maggy on twitter for a bit of inspiration. Maisie came up with the idea in the end; kids are always best at these things aren’t they so together we came up with our design! We had lots of fun making it and can’t wait to fill it with treats at our  barbecue next weekend

Maisie starts to decorate.

Maisie started by sticking on yellow post-it’s to create a ‘circle’ in the middle of the pinata. We were very surprised at how sticky they actually are and Maisie found it really easy to do!

It’s coming along nicely

We then started at the outside of the pinata and worked our way in to the middle creating different colour layers. This was Maisie’s idea to use different colours; had it been left to me it would have just been one solid colour as I’m a little OCD when it comes to things like this but I managed to keep my mouth shut and let the creativity of my daughter continue

Our finished Pinata – do you know what it is?

We asked Maxwell what it was and he said ‘flower’ so it can’t be that bad if a 2 yr old can guess

Our pretty flower pinata

So there you have it… We made a pretty pinata flower! Maisie is really very pleased with it and cannot wait to fill it with treats next weekend! Using Post-it’s is such a fab & easy way and we have a big bundle of post-it’s that we are going to use to get creative with some other things too!

This post is sponsored by 3M.

Leading the way in championing British style for kids

Childrenswear retailer, IndiaCoco turns one this month and what a year it’s been. Founded in May 2012 IndiaCoco offers a world of original, high quality and great value children’s clothes. Hand-picking the very best of British brands, IndiaCoco is a must shop if you are looking for stylish, fun and wearable clothes for the little people in your life, aged zero to eight years.

Designed to take the hard work out of discovering innovative brands for kids, IndiaCoco has many a treat in-store. Style conscious parents have welcomed a wide range of brands which offer party wear by celebrity favourite ilovegorgeous and newcomer Jessie and James to everyday practical clothes and sleepwear from Hatley, award winning Frugi,  No Added Sugar, Lilly + Sid, Ava & Luc and  Sew Heart Felt Collection, which has a range of beautiful animal slippers from donkeys to foxes and badgers.

Find IndiaCoco at www.indiacoco.com and look out for store openings in 2013.

Like IndiaCoco on Facebook at http://goo.gl/Pz3mv

To celebrate IndiaCoco’s first birthday we are running a competition with them to give one lucky reader the chance to win this gorgeous party dress from Jessie and James. Made from super soft brushed cotton jersey and machine washable it’s a must for your girl’s wardrobe this summer. The dress is available in sizes 4-5 & 6-7 years and is worth £60!

To eneter to win this beautiful dress all you need to do is complete the rafflecopter steps below – Good luck x

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Of course it isn’t just his sister he sings about… Later the version changed to include Mummy, Daddy and Liam too! Bless him

Fret not, though, because there are simple and effective things that you can do when it comes to your children and their tastes. In fact, specifically regarding these interests, you can work as a team, to ensure that you do things like re-decorating their bedroom in a way that incorporates their interests and legitimize their thoughts and feelings along the way.

We’ve been speaking to the lovely people at Room To Grow who are children bedroom specialists and give us their thoughts on the tricky task of re-decoration.

Get their input

First and foremost, it is critical that you get their input on what they want. Yes, their input may change week to week when it comes to their specific tastes and enjoyments, but you still have to work hard to seek their input. When you seek their input, you legitimize their feelings, and that can be very validating for children who yearn to be taken seriously and involved in the process as far as getting their bedroom together and re-decorated.

Communicate plans with them from the start

Second, be open with your communication with them from the start. Instead of hiding things from them, or omitting certain pieces of information regarding decorations and other issues, make it a point to fully and completely be open with them about what is realistic and possible for their bedroom re-decoration. If something clearly can’t happen or you don’t have the budget for them, tell them immediately that it is unrealistic, and help pare down their goals and interests into something that can truly be done.  A great idea is to start a scrap book with them,  a month or so in advance, so that your child can organize their thoughts and more importantly you can see what their tastes are like.

Take their interests seriously

Third, make sure that you take their interests seriously. As mentioned above, children are seeking out validation, and it can be quite affirming for them to know that their concerns were taken seriously and effectively. Make it a point for you to fully take on their concerns so you need not worry about them later regretting not being part of the process. Additionally, doing this can really open up the dialogue and relationship between you two, providing opportunities for you and your child to bond and ‘create’ together as a team, which helps them to learn life skills along the way.

Accessorize

The biggest issue that Mums and Dads find with the whole process is the inevitable change from child to teenager which can mean a whole re-decoration. However, the best tip I could possibly give you is to use good base colours and accessorize the rooms for their current tastes; if they are a fan of horses and ponies, then look for a pony themed bed cover and posters framed with Ikea frames or spend the time to decorate a chair with copies of their favourite pony magazine. Look at the different types of beds that can be bought dependent on their individual needs; are they computer lovers – then a high bed with a desk area might be perfect, or are they move of an adventure type – buy them a bed with a slide. Do they have friends to stay often? Maybe a pull-out bed is more appropriate.

You will find a way to make the re-decoration a massive success and at the end of the day, as parents all we really want to see is the smile on our child’s face.

This is a featured guest post.