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Let your kids help update your kitchen with peel and stick wallpaper

With everyone spending most of their time in their homes it has made everyone contemplate redecorating. Do it yourself home improvement projects have become very common and they are proving very favorable in understanding your home. Being locked inside their homes people have been appreciating their space and understanding the importance of it. Redesigning the

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Top ten food safety tips to protect your family from kitchen bugs

Top ten food safety tips to protect your family from kitchen bugs

Last week was Food Safety Week 2013, run by the Food Standards Agency (FSA) and this year they focused on ways to reduce the risk of food poisoning at home. Here are some simple tips to help keep you and your family safe.

1. Wash hands thoroughly with soap and warm water before cooking and after changing nappies, touching the bin, using the toilet, handling pets or preparing raw food.

2. Wash or change dish cloths, tea towels, sponges and oven gloves regularly and let them dry fully before you use them again.

3. Remove unnecessary clutter and wash worktops before and after cooking to prevent cross-contamination.

4. Always use a chopping board and wash the board in hot, soapy water after using and in between preparing raw and ready-to-eat foods. Better still, use a separate chopping board for each.

5. You don’t need to wash raw meat or poultry as thorough cooking will kill any surface germs. Washing meat can actually splash germs and raw juices onto other surfaces and equipment.

6. Make sure your fridge is set below 5°C to prevent harmful germs from growing and multiplying.

7. Don’t overfill your fridge. Air needs to be able to circulate to maintain the set temperature. If you are using infant formula we recommend you make up each feed as your baby needs it, using boiled water at a temperature of 70ºC or above to reduce the risk of infection, and use it within 2 hours. If you have no choice but to store made up bottles, do so in the coolest part of your fridge, away from the door, and for no more than 24 hours.

8. Cook food thoroughly until steaming hot in the middle to kill harmful bacteria. Food can then be cooled to a suitable temperature for children by cutting into smaller pieces and separating into shallow bowls, or even placing in a sealed container and running it under cold water.

9. ‘Use by’ dates are typically found on perishable products (dairy, meat and fish) and are based on scientific testing to determine how long these foods will stay safe. After that date, food could be unsafe to eat even if it is correctly stored and looks and smells fine. If you need to store a food for longer, consider freezing it.

10. ‘Best before’ dates are used on foods that have a longer shelf life and tell us how long the food will be at its best. After that date it is normally safe to eat, but its flavour and texture might have deteriorated.

To see how safe your kitchen habits are and for more tips, take the FSA’s Kitchen Check online. You can get your little ones involved too by downloading their fun young people’s activities.

Kitchen Check can be found at: www.food.gov.uk/kitchen-check

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Updating the Kitchen – Moodboard

As I have said I have a love of mid century and Orla Kiely has a great interpretation of it. I love her tins and fell hard for her melamine range. The tray is a great size and the handles makes it perfect for the boys to carry. The containers are going to get a lot of use from storing baking to summer picnics.

I adore Camila Prada’s designs, they are clearly the love children of Tove Jansson and Orla Kiely. We use a Koko storage jar as a sugar dish and it makes me smile everytime I use it. I love functional peices that look good and work for us and rather than having the same things as everyone else I am happy to save up for the item I want or ask for it for Christmas!

Most of you will know by know that I am a tea monster too and when Not on the High Street offered me a gift I decided to get a Linda Bloomfield tea pot. I choose the handmade 2 cup size and it is reassuringly heavy and pours beautifully. It is a delight to use and makes drinking tea even more enjoyable. MadDad things is looks rather breast like and it is delightfully tactile

After losing yet another lamp shade and cup to a ball in the house, we decided we needed some family rules and Find me a gift were happy to help and sent me a personalised family rules print. My rules are: no balls in the house, try new things, use kind words, mind your manners, do your best, laugh out loud, be happy, share, enjoy the little things and keep your promises. What would yours be?

I am planning a video of my updated kitchen as soon as a few last things are finished and in place.

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Get the Basics Right in Your Kitchen

Get the Basics Right in Your Kitchen

We would all love to have a more impressive kitchen but what if you don’t even know where to start? Will you need to spend a fortune on completely overhauling the place?

Before you start splashing out big sums of money on expensive changes it is best to think of the basics which can make the difference.

The Right Kind of Lighting

The type of lighting you use in the kitchen is vital to making it a pleasant room to be in and to cook in. Your first step should be to check out some ideas using chandeliers, recessed lighting, under cabinet lights and all of the other kinds which are available now. Once you know what the options are you can work out which ones would fit in best to your room. In general terms, a mixture of different types of lighting is best, although this might not be the case in a particularly small kitchen.

The Pots and Pans

Of course, the kitchen is a room we cook in and this means that you need think about the basics required for doing this right. A good example here comes with the saucepans from Lakeland. Buying a few of these will give you practical pieces of cookware and will also ensure that you have attractive pots in the room as well. You will find other ideas for useful basic items on the site at Lakeland.co.uk. By stocking up well on these things you will make it a nicer room at little cost.

The Colour of the Walls

There are some highly popular colours used in many kitchens and others which aren’t so highly recommended. The exact tone you would be best using will be determined by factors such as the style of the kitchen and the size of the room. If you aren’t sure which colour to use then a good idea is to buy a few of those little sample pots and paint small areas of the walls with different colours. After you have lived with the different tones for a few days it should a lot easier to work out which one to choose for the whole room.

The Space

One of the most common complaints which people make about their kitchens is around the lack of space. If your kitchen is too small or cramped then cooking is probably more of a problem than it should be. This might seem like an issue without a solution in some cases it could be but there are some tips to help you get a bigger working space in most types of kitchen. The first and simplest one is to clear out anything you don’t use on a daily basis. This can make a lot of space and help the room look better too.

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