Guest post: Home Lighting

If you are a lover of home lighting and just know that every colour has it’s own temperature and each room conveys its own feeling and emotions, then you need to be thinking about bulbs.

The relatively unsexy and lets be honest ‘dull’ light bulb is often an overlooked part of home and interior lighting design.

Technology has moved on and LED lighting has changed a lot of lighting designs.

More and more LED lit light fittings are appearing in product ranges all the time.Major UK designer Franklite confirmed their plans to me this week on Twitter: “Ultimately LED is the way to go.”

These once costly-to-make lights do make energy saving differences and their incandescence when lit is unique.

All White for 2013?

A lot of  designers are  talking about white in 2013 and how it will be incorporated into backgrounds. The Pantone charts for next year do have lots of white and crème variants. So expect to see it feature heavily in designs next year.

The excellent  Laura Bielecki is well worth looking up she did a sneak peak into design trends back in September.

White is great with LED lighting, the main difference with LED and conventional bulbs is that they emit light in one direction and not in the all round way of a standard bulb. This makes them perfect for feature focus and for softening blocks of colour in a room.

This year we saw a lot of manufactures and designers creating ranges of paired wall lighting some simple and some striking in their design. Paired lights make a great alternative to overhead lighting and lamps, and of course are ideal for the classic dimmer switch.

The materials used to make lamp shades was a big focus for designers in 2012 some exquisite frosted glass, paper and metal designs appeared. Check Out the Foscarini range to get an idea.

We can expect to see this influence filter into high streets and stores next year. In particular companies like Franklite have come up with a range of overhead lighting with large metallic shades.

Fun, whimsy and romance seem to be all part of the design vogue for next year. Somewhere along the line design and home crafts are set to meet in your home.

So have fun experimenting with lighting, one of the tricks of the trade is to draw a room map to experiment where furniture and lighting can be placed to best effect. From there you can work out how a room will actually be used and how you would like to light it.

Images credited to www.franklite.net

Author Bio
My name is Simon and I run Easylighting.co.uk from my base in Norfolk a little place called Long Stratton you have probably never heard of. We are a home lighting specialist and do all our business on line.

Our tenth anniversary is at the end of November we wanted to do something special for our customers.  From Monday the 26th November through to Saturday 24th we will be giving away lighting on our Facebook page.  

Foodie Penpals: Liquorice love

I was thrilled with my foodie penpal box this month!

It was sent over by Lucy from Leeds. When she first emailed me about it she asked how I felt about liquorice. My experience of it was of crappy sweets from our village sweet shop that I never really liked. However, I'd never really tried proper liquorice.

Well, what came through in the post blew my mind. The box contained all sorts of goodies including an ice cube tray in tea shapes (iced tea!), which may have been the reason for our weather getting so good. The box also included hibiscus flowers and an accompanying recipe, Mexican fajita mix, organic bay leaves, olives and some amazing tea.

Firstly, let me talk about the liquorice. These Pontefract cakes were amazing. I didn't know that liquorice was so soft! I've found a new sweetie love. It took a lot of willpower not to devour these in one go.

Lucy also included some liquorice root. I had no idea it was grown. In her accompanying letter she said there used to be a huge field of it between Leeds and Pontefract and the roots are six feet long. I'm now a liquorice expert and lover. I'm hoping that because it's from a root it's healthy... maybe not.

I've been raving about this tea since it arrived. It's After Dinner Tea with fennel and peppermint to help support a healthy digestive system. Lucy also sent empty tea bags (!) because its loose leaf. However, I recently purchased a new teapot so it's been seeing a lot of action.

I was worried the tea might be a little too pepperminty for me but it is glorious. The routine in my house is cook dinner, eat, drink After Dinner Tea. It's only right.

If you weren't sold on Lucy's genius by now then please take a look at her fennel, chilli and black mustard oatcakes. For which she rendered her own lard! I was infinately impressed before I'd even tried them. They had a really moist and subtly meaty flavour but then the other flavours kick in. They're so wonderful they're had to describe.

It's safe to say these were gone almost instantly. They boyfriend got to try a corner of one before I scoffed them all.

Thank you, Lucy! 

You should all check out her blog Offally Good.

Guest Post: Foodie Swap

As part of the Foodie Penpal swap I got to send Dan a box of goodies from Norfolk. Here's his post about the experience.

First of all let me thank Jess for hijacking her blog, being blogless and this being my first foodie penpal contact I’m hesitant to start up a blog as I don’t feel I can commit my time to maintaining something on a weekly basis (unless the blog was exclusively about LoLcats, bikes and on account of having a four year old daughter, iCarly).

Jess’s package came through this morning and I was very pleasantly surprised with what I received, all exclusively products made in Norfolk.

First off I received an epic bar of Rocky Road Gnaw (made in Gnorfolk according to the packet). I’m saving this bad boy for a rainy day, it looks too good just to fritter away on anything but a Ghost/Beaches/Dirty Dancing marathon.

Next up was the delicious Norfolk Garden Rose Hip Extra Jelly Preserve. This was an amazing surprise, not normally a massive fan of Jam or Preserves the taste and consistency is amazing, sweet but with a freshness at the back, in some ways reminding me of when you bite into a toffee apple. I paired this up with a very crumbly Wensleydale on a Carr’s water biscuit and the combination was fantastic.

Finally in an already fantastic package was a bottle of pure evil called Inferno, a Smokey Naga Chilli Sauce. Needless to say this sauce is HOT, that said once the heat dissipates it gives way to a brilliant flavor profile of tomato, smokey chipotle and BBQ sauce.

Taking the Inferno for a spin I opted for my favorite brunch of Scrambled Eggs on Toast with smoked salmon, but instead of the compulsory Tabasco I opted to caramelize my smoked salmon in a small amount of the sauce, needless to say this is how I’ll be making scrambled eggs from now on.

Somewhat spicier than the standard I normally make the Inferno complemented the Eggs and toast really well, with an initial heat quickly toned down by the creaminess of the eggs as well as the other piquant flavors from the sauce elevating the butter (tip: always put too much butter in your scrambled eggs – your palate will thankyou for it!).

All that’s left for me to say sincere thanks to Jess for the package and I hope one day I can return the favor!

Swivel chair

This is utterly perfect. I need it in my life. £549 from Made.com

Want: Jersey Sofa

This sofa is £299 and I can just envision it in our conservatory next to the book case. It would give it a well needed pop of colour and it looks comfortable too. We have that money in our savings. Can I buy it. Please?

I know we should pay off all the things we've already bought but I want this. It's from the glorious, wonderful, brilliant Made.com