It is the bank holiday weekend and if the weather is kind to us, it would be nice to be out enjoying the garden. Sloane and Sons Garden Benches can be centre-piece of your garden. It is a place where you can sit and admire the fruits of your hard-labour and long hours spent.  We all desire to improve our garden’s style and we need the hints and tips from the experts and professionals who can guide us.  If, like me, you need a little guidance, here are top sites to visit to find these ideas that can improve your garden’s style.

Royal Horticultural Society

The big daddy of the gardening world is the RHS.  This is a website that has a host of expert professional gardeners who are passionate and energetic advocates for garden style.  When you visit this website, you will be treated to a plant finder, a help and advice section, a gardening calendar – as well as an online shop.  This is a no-nonsense site for the garden lovers of the world – and the first place you should visit to learn how to add style to your grounds.

Great British Gardens

What is great about this site is that it includes images from more than 30 gardens around Britain – including Wisley, Great Dixter and Harewood House – and you can click on the garden and find all the information needed to aspire to the same style.  This is the site where you can aspire to the work of some of greatest garden designers in the country.  The great news is that this site also includes a directory of other gardening websites where you can continue your education.

National Garden Scheme

This is more commonly known as the Yellow Book.  You can go here – type in your postcode – and find open gardens close to your home.  You can then visit the garden and find out how they managed to get the style that deserves such visitors – and raise millions of pounds for charity at the same time.

Lost Gardens of Heligan

This site is a lot more commercial than other sites – but you will enjoy the virtual tours of the different gardens you could visit if you went to St Austell.  The great thing about the website is that you can go slow and look closely at the small details that bring the real style to Heligan.  There is also a timeline – which shows you how the gardens are maintained – and live webcams to keep completely up-to-date on the latest moves the gardeners are making.

Kew

Kew has nineteen science teams that focus in detail on over 70 thousand plants specimens from across the world.  Is there anything else you could possibly need to know about planting and maintenance of plants and trees from anywhere around the globe. You can also have a virtual tour of the treetop walkway – experience the gardens of Kew from your home.

Thompson & Morgan

It is important to know that Thompson & Morgan is a site for selling seeds. This is an eCommerce site aimed at promoting the range of seeds they want you to buy (I love that you can buy garden seeds online) This said, this company was founded over 150 years ago and they have the largest range of seeds for sale – with over 1500 seeds at an incredibly low price.  It might not offer you unbiased tips – but it will offer you a place where you can fulfil your plans for your garden.

BBC Gardening

The BBC is a site aimed at the universal gardener.  Another way of saying this is that the advice can be a little basic and the tone patronising.  However, the advice given is also high quality and representative of one of the widest range of gardeners and their gardens.  The site is informative without being flashy – and it is where you can find the A- Z of almost everything about adding style to your garden.

The Gardening Website

To make your garden sing with the style you desire you need to know where to find the perfect plants.  The Gardening Website is a guide to centres and specialists, furniture suppliers and designers.  You want to find a hammock – come to this site – you want to find the organic chemicals for plant maintenance – come to this site – you want to find bamboo – well there are 22 specialists listed.

Claire Austin

Whenever you read articles online you always hear from Claire Austin –she offers excellent advice and guidance on garden style.  Her website offers clear and to-the-point advance on a range of hardy plans – and Austin provides honest advice – even calling some species a thug.  Sometimes you don’t want the sales pitch – or a well edited list of species you should be looking for.  Sometimes you need as many of the species of bearded and herbaceous peonies – and to be told which one is going to do what you expect.

The Urban Garden

Not all of us have a huge garden in the country where we can create the most amazing border.  Some of us have boxes and pots that need a flourish – this is our garden that needs some style.  This site is brilliant at offering advice to those of us whose hands are not yet blistered and scarred from hours sculpting our landscape.  

I can't say that personally I am the most green fingered person but am lucky enough to know what looks good and having a family who love to be outside, helps to look after the plants and indeed enjoy the garden.

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One of my main goals on my 40 things to do list was to be the healthiest I have ever been and that in itself means I need to be in charge and take control of my naughty habits. Multiple factors play a role in enhancing your health and having a healthy life. Such include eating right, exercising regularly and avoiding destructive habits like drinking and smoking. While many individuals admit that they should improve their wellbeing and lead a healthy lifestyle, the majority of them have no idea where to begin. The following are some invaluable tips that I have picked up, that can make your efforts a whole lot easier. 

1. Watch your Eating Habits

Your efforts to lead a healthy lifestyle will be futile if you don’t change your eating habits. You should ensure to eat at least three balanced meals in a day and avoid skipping the first meal, breakfast.  Also be certain to consider the portions to avoid overeating. It is advisable to eat healthy snacks in between the meals rather than taking huge portions of food. Also, do not take vitamin supplements unless your doctor prescribes them for you. Instead, make a habit of consuming plenty of fruits and healthy smoothies, which will effectively supply all the nutrients and vitamins needed by your body. 

2. Take a Balanced Diet

While different people have varying tastes and preferences and thus prefer taking diverse meals, you should at least ensure that your prospective meal is capable of providing your body with all the requisite nutrients. This includes consuming fresh fruits, veggies, whole grains, healthy fats, proteins, and dairy products.  Balanced nutrition has multiple health benefits like healthy skin and strong teeth. Also, healthier food choices can potentially prevent health complications like heart disease, diabetes, and high blood pressure as well as aiding in weight loss. 

3. Consume A Lot of Natural Juices and Veggie Smoothies

Eating a lot of fruits and veggies is essential in supplying your body with vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants. They also serve to boost your immunity level and help in the prevention of diseases, thus improving your overall health.  There is no better way to take fruits and veggies than creating juices. When creating drinks like smoothies, don’t stick to one type of fruit; select from the five main colors to obtain a variety of phytonutrients to combat signs of aging and prevent diseases.

Dark green fruits support lung health, arteries function, the health of the liver, and eye functioning.  Similarly, feeding on brown-white fruits can help you to obtain strong, healthy bones and an optimally-functioning circulatory system. Blue-purple fruits have antioxidants that do a great job with fighting the symptoms of aging while also supporting a healthy brain and heart.

4. Adjust your Drinking Habits 

Drinking a lot of water helps with the expedient elimination of toxins from your body. Also, every system in the body depends on water to function thus taking more liquid is very beneficial to your wellbeing. Water also goes a long way in aiding with weight loss, cell functioning, and metabolism.

While at it, you will want to reduce your alcohol intake, which will help with the prevention of health problems such as liver cirrhosis. Moreover, alcohol encourages dehydration, which can be disastrous to the body cells. Instead, take more healthy fluids like juice, broth, and milk; they not only provide many benefits to the body, they are also not harmful, and before leaving here you should check out Veranda Interiors for machines that you can use to better your health. Feeding on juicy veggies and fruits increase the hydration levels of your body. You ought to make a habit of getting real veggies and fruits instead of taking artificially sweetened drinks like soda. 

5. Less Red Meat and More Fiber

Red meat is associated with a high risk of coronary heart disease due to its high-fat content. By cutting on the consumption of red meat, you will ultimately reduce the cholesterol levels in your body, thus improving your health. Conversely, having less fiber in your body can increase the risk of heart disease, high blood sugar, and excess cholesterol in your blood.  You should, therefore, ensure to consume more foods that are rich in fiber such as veggies, legumes, and whole grains. These will ultimately help you with the prevention of obesity, stroke or diabetes. 

6. Exercise Regularly

Regular exercise is literally a miracle worker; it can boost your moods, manage your weight and generally make you feel better. Workouts are simple and healthy; if you can’t make it to the gym, you can walk, swim or dance for like an hour daily. Workouts aid in the prevention of heart disease, diabetes, stroke, and even cancer.

    7. Sleep Well

Getting sufficient quality sleep boasts multiple health-related benefits. It helps with the regulation of the immune system, weight management, and boosting your mental health. An adult should sleep for 7-8 hours consistently with no interruptions, and adolescents may go up to 10 hours. Quality sleep will go a long way in the prevention of depression and boost your mood. 

8. Cook at Home and Walk More

 Practicing healthy habits like cooking food at home is critical to achieving a healthy lifestyle. This is also considerably cheaper and healthier than eating in hotels. If you have limited time during the week, cook enough on the weekends. Also, if you have problems going to the gym, consider taking the staircase instead of an elevator. Take a stroll after dinner or adopt a hobby that will put you on the move like geocaching. 

There are various adjustments that you can make in your daily life to complement your efforts to adopt a healthy lifestyle. The majority of these steps are easy to follow and inexpensive. You could, for instance, resolve to always walk from home to work, invest in a good water bottle or replace alcoholic drinks with healthy smoothies. A combination of healthy water intake, balanced nutrition and workouts will go a long way in achieving your goals related to a healthy lifestyle.

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Ok, so this sounds like a weird blog post. Strange title, and all. I know. But bear with me, hear me out, because I bet a lot of you ladies – and men, for that matter – will be in the same boat. Just a few hundred words in, and you’ll be considering whether Carol is an dark oak console table, I promise you.

I just want us to think how much time we invest into our homes. Sure, you may not be the obsessive type who hoovers five times a day and always keeps an immaculate home, but once you own your own place, we all become a little more house proud.

We care how things look, we want it to be as perfect as can be. We design the décor, we take care selecting colours, we choose furniture that is built to last.

We ditch the convenience of the cheap flat-packs and opt for pieces from higher end retailers such as Cox and Cox because you can rely on it, it’s going to do you good. It’s not going to bend and bow, and it certainly isn’t going to fall apart when you use it to support your stuff.

Can the same be said for your friends, and likewise, could your friends say the same of you?

As we get older, it becomes harder to make new friends. Friendship circles tend to grow smaller. We all go off, get married, have children, build our careers. There tends to be less and less time to fit in friendship. The flat-pack friends are the first to buckle under the pressure, and that’s when you realise who your solid friends are.

When you’ve less time for gossip and trivialities, as adults we start to realise whose company we truly cherish. Who we would do anything for. Who would do anything for us. Who is going to bear the weight of our problems in the tough times, and who we will do the same for when the tables turn.

After all, we choose furniture that is comfortable and makes us happy, and so surely our friends should be chosen in the same way?

While we realise these things, it’s important to make time to care for these relationships. Go for a coffee, share a bottle of wine over a home-cooked dinner, take the kids on a playdate.

And I guess that’s food for thought.

While it’s trusty and always there when you need it, you must care for your favourite oak cabinet. Dust it, polish it. Don’t overcrowd it with your clutter, without being willing to take some of that away again to see it gleam. In the same way, although our dependable friends may always be there, we must make time for them too.

Choose wisely and nurture the friendship. Invest in friendships that are built to last and care for them for years to come.

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First things first – why would you want to get your children interested in your day job? While some parents prefer to keep their work and home life separate, for others, it is important to bridge the gap where possible and teach their children about life as a working adult. If like me, you work from home this is great, although not everyone can do this and it will also depend on your specific job, but for many, this is a perfect way to introduce youngsters to the concept of ‘going to work’.

Similarly, this has many varied benefits for everyone involved. Here are a few of the main benefits:

Benefits for You

It’s no secret that parenting is hard, and for many, trying to juggle parenting and a career is a daily struggle. Therefore, any way of making things easier is always going to be gratefully received and much appreciated!

If your children begin to learn about your job and perhaps understand a little about what you do every day, the gap between work and home life decreases. When you head off to work, your children will be able to picture you at work throughout the day; for younger children, in particular, this can be an excellent way of reminding them why mummy or daddy has to go to work every day.

Benefits for Your Children

Children are naturally curious, and by allowing them an insight into the world of work, you will be indulging their curiosity and encouraging them to ask questions and develop an interest in what you do. Depending on your job, it could also help your little ones learn new skills and perhaps even develop a passion for the industry of their very own!

Benefits for Your Employer

Keeping employees happy and healthy is a big must for businesses – after all, a happy workforce is a productive one. By allowing employees the freedom to relax a little and introduce their families to their colleagues or work environment, they will be working towards a stronger team of employees, something which is ultimately beneficial for the business as a whole.

Workplace Fun for All the Family

If you’re sold on the idea, all that’s left to do is to decide how you want to introduce your children to your working life. There are many different ways in which you can go about achieving this – here are a few to get you started.

Team Building

Forget any ideas you may have of trust falls or sitting in a circle in a stuffy meeting room, trying not to fall asleep. Team building has come a long way since the dull activities you have probably encountered multiple times in your career – now, it is something to be enjoyed rather than avoided. Team building activities and events can easily involve the whole family and can take place pretty much anywhere, at any time. They can range from team building activities in the evening after office hours to interactive quizzes or treasure hunts to fun games testing each other’s skills – and competitiveness, of course!

Family Fun Day

If the fun aspect is what you’re after, then a family fun day will be the perfect event for you. Usually taking place on a summer weekend day, fun days are great opportunities for your family to meet your colleagues and vice versa. It’s a relaxed, light-hearted approach which will suit younger children as they can easily find other children to run off and play with, giving you time for a breather!

Charity Events

From traditional fundraisers and bake sales to office fancy dress challenges, sponsorships and sweepstakes, the general motto for charity events is the more, the merrier! If you are planning an upcoming charity event at work, ask your manager if you can get your kids involved – whether it’s helping to wash cars, donating old toys or attending a fete, family-friendly events are always likely to be more popular.

Since the benefits of mixing home and work life are clear to see, when will you be brave enough to take the plunge and allow your family to learn about what you do at work?

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