Be Good To Yourself With Begu Teas & A Giveaway Worth £125

I don't know about you but having had the kids at home for the last six weeks has seen a corresponding increase in my weight.  It's so difficult to resist joining in with snacking and so easy to say yes to that restaurant dessert or the extra glass of wine (or two!).

I also find that my exercise decreases dramatically since we usually walk back and forth to school so, come September, I'm usually feeling in need of some sort of healthy eating and exercise plan.

You may have noticed that teas are gaining in popularity as a way of supplementing your weight loss / dietary programme and they are arguably better for you than the other popular option of juice diets since they don't contain loads of sugar and are kinder to your teeth.

I was recently sent a selection of teas from Begu Tea to try.  Begu Teas are a range of speciality teas designed to help you with your weight loss and healthy lifestyle goals.

There are currently six teas in the range, each formulated with carefully selected ingredients from around the World and blended by Begu's master blender.

The herbs contained in the individual teas have been used traditionally throughout centuries for their varied health and lifestyle promoting benefits and each of the 6 teas has a specific target to help you achieve your goals at specific times of the day in a completely natural way.

There is:-

Appetite - £24.99 for 28 bags

Appetite is full of herbal fillers and appetite suppressants to keep your portion size down. It contains Chinese Green Tea, Cinnamon, Fennel, Liquorice, Peppermint, Hawthorn Leaves, Psyllium seeds and apple pieces.

Crave - £24.99 for 28 bags

Crave is a blend designed to kill those pesky cravings that hit through the day (mine are usually for biscuits!).  It's a sweet blend and is strangely filling.  It contains Sri Lankan black tea, Cinnamon, Coconut, Fenugreek, Yerba Mate, Caraway, Gymnema, Stevia and Sunflower and Calendula petals.

Calm - £24.99 for 28 bags

Calm is designed to bring you inner calm and help you to resist those urges to binge.  This blend contains Rooibos, Peppermint, Chamomile, Gotu Kola, Lemon Balm, Lime Flowers, Passionflower and Calendula petals.

Morning Buzz - £19.99 for 28 bags

This blend is formulated to get your mind and body going in the morning so that you make the best choices to support your body and cut calories.  It contains Chinese Green Tea, Yerba Mate, Ginger, Siberian Ginseng, Lemongrass, Gingko Biloba and Lemon Peel.

nightea night - £19.99 for 28 bags

Nightea night is caffeine free and designed to help you get a restful night's sleep so that your body can repair itself.  This blend contains Cinnamon, Ginger, Hibiscus, Apple pieces, Rosehip, Hawthorn leaves, Orange peel, Cardamom, Valerian root and Hops.

System Cleanse - £10.99 for 14 bags

This is a naturally purifying blend which contains a natural laxative - ideal for those who have a low fibre diet. The blend contains Rooibos, Senna leaves, Dandelion leaves, Hawthorn leaves, Psyllium seeds, Lavender and Vanilla pieces.

Packaged in resealeable packs of 28 teabags, with the exception of the System Cleanse which has 14 bags, these are high quality, beautifully packaged teas which make tea-toxing a lot more glamorous than the days of those fruity herbal teas which could fill an entire office block floor with the smell of blackcurrant.

I am a big tea drinker and it was no hardship at all to substitute a Begu teabag for one of my normal tea bags (Yorkshire Tea or Glengettie, I love a strong brew).

Although the Begu teas aren't cheap, there are a variety of subscription offers available so that you can defray the cost if you buy more than one type at a time (up to 40%).  There is also 20% off your first order - details here.

You'll also find lots of helpful diet and nutrition tips.  My teas came with a selection of fact sheets which contained all sorts of useful advice - for example a structure for a healthy day's eating and exercise (there's also a fitness section on the website which contains a selection of basic exercise videos that show you exactly how they should be done.   I now know what a burpee is!)

There's a guide to identifying the triggers that make you eat (anger, boredom) and ways to manage your appetite (plan your dessert in advance, only serve what you intend to eat).

In fact, Begu teas are designed to be part of a more conscious approach to health, fitness and nutrition and on that basis I can see that their programme would be quite effective if followed diligently.

I personally enjoyed all the teas and will be continuing with the programme over the next few weeks to get my eating and exercise back on an even keel.

If you would like to give their system a try I have a giveaway of one pack of each type of the 6 Begu teabags worth over £125 in total for one lucky winner.

Entry is via the Rafflecopter widget and the giveaway is open to UK entrants only.  Full terms and conditions can be found on my Competitions Page.  The giveaway ends at 11:59 pm on Friday 16th September.



a Rafflecopter giveaway

Good luck!

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Working From Home During School Holidays

We're nearly at the end of the school holidays and it's been a bit of a moveable feast.  We had a great holiday, although we only went away for a week and the kids have been taken out and about most days, but it’s been tough juggling the needs of the blog with childcare.

Just the phrase 'childcare' makes it sound as if the kids are someone else's responsibility rather than my own little, um, treasures and there's the problem.

Men, to generalise, seem to be able to compartmentalise the various bits of their lives whilst we women find it a lot harder. This may be, of course, because we are juggling more of the housework, the shopping, the cleaning and the myriad of other chores that crop up and have to be dealt with on the spot, even though the Husband will declare them to be hardly a matter of life and death and things which could be dealt with later.

Mat often says that I spend far longer at my PC than he does and that I am rubbish at switching off.  I suspect most bloggers are the same.  I have had a couple of people ask me lately how to go about setting up a blog and it's only when you stop to think about how you do this that you realise how much work is involved and how many skills a blogger needs to develop - writing, social media promotion, coding, photography, design, marketing, budgeting.

But it is really hard to justify to yourself why you are writing a piece for your blog or scheduling some social media posts whilst the kids are kicking around bored or slumped on the sofa with their iPads.

I do explain to them that, for us, blogging defrays some of the household costs and gives us the odd treat but even so it's hard to escape the feeling that sometimes we bloggers are 'pimping our children out'.  Some kids have their lives more instagrammed than Kim Kardashian's.

These are my 5 biggest challenges when the kids are home:-

The Kids

Obviously.  With my two it's usually peace and love or all out war and it can change between the two in minutes.  If they're not fighting each other, they're ganging up on me and have got negotiation skills which, frankly, the Met should be making use of in hostage situations.  Currently, their favourite thing is to sit in separate rooms playing Minecraft in a shared world and bellowing at each other if one dares to destroy the other's building.

Bored of Coco Pops The Kids Took Matters Into Their Own Hands

They like to appear like spectres in the early morning demanding 'urgent software updates' and breakfast. Have they slept in at all this holiday?  Don't be silly.  Combine this with late bedtimes, shouting at each other across the corridor from their bedrooms about Minecraft designs and I predict a massive slump to coincide with the first week of school.

Food

I am rubbish at meal planning at the best of times, whereas the Husband will happily knock up something tasty from whatever is festering in the fridge in about 20 minutes flat.  Not for nothing does he call me "The Queen of the Reheat".  I do mean to come up with exciting meals but frequently it's the usual fall-backs of fish fingers or pizza.  No excuse I know but despite having a wall of cookery books, cooking from most of them involves a supermarket trip and at least a small basket of ingredients I'll probably use once and then find them again 2 years later when I get round to tidying up the food cupboards. Asking myself "what would Mary Berry do?" doesn't help.

Cleaning

It doesn't matter how many times I vacuum, two minutes later it needs doing again.  Kids rarely put things in the bin unless reminded so I am always picking up yoghurt lids, plastic wrapping and wiping sticky fingers off bathroom mirrors and windows.  I can't concentrate on writing if the dishwasher's full or I have a batch of laundry to hang out.  I could happily spend hours picking fluff off carpets.

Social Media

If there is one thing that can suck you into a vortex where time ceases to exist, it's social media.  I've read all the advice about only answering email twice a day, turning your notifications off, writing your blog post first thing, getting up earlier to write before the family get up..... and so on .....  but I can't quite resist the lure of the instant message nor the suspicion that something exciting surely must have happened in Dinas Powys that I have to read about.

Health

I say health, actually health anxiety is closer to the mark.  I'm usually obsessing about my teeth, my glasses, my hearing, my tinnitus - and on the back of that all the things I'm supposed not to be doing to keep my health on an even keel. The daily glass of wine is probably one of the things that should go but when the kids are off, the chances of that going are zero.

I keep reading about bloggers who dutifully say they don't switch on their PC until the kids are in bed and then blog from 9 pm until the small hours but I would be totally knackered if I did that.

If they do, then they have my heartfelt admiration but I suspect they are an urban myth and like many of us have got into the terrible habit of parenting with one eye on a smartphone and one hand on a keyboard.

Let's not talk about the mum guilt.  It never goes away does it? I am earning money for the family and using some of the skills I worked so hard and for so long to acquire.  Hopefully I'm also teaching them that there are always ways to contribute, even if you aren't in formal employment.

I know that working from home and looking after the kids is a privilege but I think I am going to have to come up with a better routine when the next holiday comes around or I'll be blogging about my kids childhood rather than participating in it.

And that's a price no blog is worth.

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New Releases, Free & Bargain Books Link-up 26 August 2016

How are you all this week?  I can't believe our holiday has come and gone already and we're on the downward slope to "back to school".

It's been a great reminder that we all need to make more of an effort to switch off and put the iPads down occasionally!  We've even managed to get Ieuan to read some books for the local library's summer reading challenge.  Caitlin is already an avid reader.

I hope you've managed to carve out some 'me time' for a bit of R & R (relaxation and reading of course).

As ever, there are some great books to choose from on this week's linky.

Sharing the Love of Books
Enjoy our selection of New Releases / Free & Bargain Books this week

Authors please feel free to add your own books
Readers please free to add your own finds
(any genre except erotica welcome)

This weekly link up is hosted by Beck Valley Books & these awesome book loving blogs...
Monday
 Life as Leels | IrishdaisylovesRomance | Book Babble | All Romance Reader
Tuesday
It's My Side of Life | Celticlady's Reviews | First Time Mommy Adventures 
Wednesday
Beck Valley Books | Cinnamon Hollow Reviews
Thursday
Miki's Hope | Nicki's Nook
Friday
Ebook Addicts | I Love Romance | Mother Distracted | Colorimetry | The Ultimate Fan Blog
Saturday
Totally Addicted to Reading | 3 Partners in Shopping | Angie's Angle | I Create Purty Thangs | Wishful Endings
Sunday
Lynchburg Mama | LibriAmoriMiei | Ali - The Dragon Slayer | Wondermom Wannabe | Deal Sharing Aunt | Rambling Reviews 

For Pre-orders post - PRE-ORDER / genre / title /author

For New Releases post - NEW / genre / title / author

For Free Books post - FREE / genre / title / author / end date 

For Bargain Books post - SALE / price / genre / title / author / end date
(Strictly no Erotica please.  Steamy romance is fine but watch those covers people, incase any underage child is viewing it!)

Click here for this weeks awesome selection!

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Summer Bank Holiday Fun On A Budget With Ideal World

There's something equally poignant and special about the last bank holiday before autumn sets in.  

It's our last chance to pull out all the stops and ignore the fact that it has been raining for weeks, the Husband's locked himself in the shed and the kids have been rendered mute by iPads.

Many of us have blown our budget on days out around the UK, not to mention the fact that our offspring have eaten us out of house and home.  We are still trying to dig our way out of a crisp packet mountain having naively thought it was actually possible to win a holiday on that Walkers' Spell & Go promotion.

So, are there ways you can have fun cheaply without forking out another £100+ on a theme park family ticket for the privilege of inspecting the motorway tarmac as you roast in a traffic jam and then spend 2 hours queuing for a ride which lasts less than 5 minutes?

Well, possibly - but it might involve a bit of fibbing and a lot of "well that's what we used to do in the good old days".

Nothing like a good old fashioned game of  "hunt for the rusty bicycle"

If you're all out of bribery tactics and wine o'clock is now commencing when the sun is over the yard arm anywhere in the world,  here's some budget friendly suggestions for the last 'blow out' of summer.

*  plan ahead - you can save money by booking attraction tickets online in advance and there may be some last minute hotel bargains to be had from sites like lastminute.com.

* save on train fares by investing in a Family & Friends Rail Card which gives you 1/3 off fares and 60% off the kids' fares 

Thankfully the kids haven't noticed that the sea is approximately 5 miles away

* check for offers on your loyalty cards, such as Tesco Clubcard and dining cards like Tastecard which for a small annual fee gives you up to 50% off in over 7000 restaurants across the UK, plus a range of other attractions and cinemas.

*If the weather's fine, just pack a picnic and a football and head off to your local nature reserve or the beach (but be prepared for queues as usual).  Don't forget the suncream

*Of course there's the standby of the Great British Barbecue, even if it's raining!  

*Or what about a movie afternoon with popcorn for the kids and something made out of grapes for mum?  

* If it's raining, a family boardgame challenge will pass a couple of hours - the old favourites are best - Monopoly, Cluedo or how about Kerplunk or Mousetrap?  

If all else fails and the kids strop off to their bedrooms with their gadgets, you could always catch up with a bit on online shopping and snap up some of the bargains to be had.  

Why not join the fun with Ideal World (Sky 654, Freeview 22, Virgin 747, Freesat 812 and at www.idealworld.tv) who are giving free postage and packing on everything until 9 pm on Monday 29th August.  

They'll be running lots of fun competitions throughout the bank holiday weekend with some fabulous prizes on offer.

No queues, no public transport, no stroppy kids.  

Actually that sounds like quite a fun bank holiday to me......

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Beck Valley Book Tour: The Goodbye Year by Kaira Rouda

Melanie, a perfectionist mom who views the approaching end of parenting as a type of death, can’t believe she has only one more year to live vicariously through her slacker senior son, Dane. Gorgeous mom Sarah has just begun to realize that her only daughter, Ashley, has been serving as a stand-in for her traveling husband, and the thought of her daughter leaving for college is cracking the carefully cultivated façade of her life. Will and his wife are fine—as long as he follows the instructions on the family calendar and is sure to keep secret his whole other life with Lauren, the woman he turns to for fun (and who also happens to have a daughter in the senior class).

Told from the points of view of both the parents and the kids, The Goodbye Year explores high school peer pressure, what it’s like for young people to face the unknown of life after high school, and how a transition that should be the beginning of a couple’s second act together—empty nesting—might possibly be the end.

Available to buy from....

Kindle    Amazon Print   Barnes and Noble   iBooks   Kobo   Google Play

“Rouda deftly examines the difficult transition parents and their children face as they prepare for the end of one life and the beginning of another. Her latest is a compelling story and a thoughtful examination of the nature of change and the importance of working to accept it.” ―Booklist 

 “The Goodbye Year is an often hilarious, sometimes heartbreaking, always engaging look at the last year before high school seniors leave their families for good. I devoured it!” -Meg Mitchell Moore, author of The Admissions, So Far Away, and The Arrivals 

 "The family dramas and dynamics are things that we can all relate to..." -Redbook magazine, "20 Best Books to Read Come Spring" 

 "Kaira Rouda channels Peyton Place meets The Real Housewives of Orange County with her newest book, The Goodbye Year.” ―Working Mother magazine

My Review

Many of us Brits don't really 'get' the US school culture - all that focus on sporting prowess and sophomore cliques but Rouda's tale of families embracing the challenges of the last school year before college is gripping for all that.  

The Goodbye Year is a story about 5 families and how the adults and kids deal with the pressures put on all of them to 'achieve' and to be a storybook family.  Everything, however, is far from picture perfect for, whilst the mums are falling apart trying to maintain the "real housewife" illusion in an affluent beach community, the fathers are behaving in ways which are far from perfect.  

Rouda addresses the very real "empty-nest syndrome" and how it can leave some parents struggling to find an identity beyond someone's mum or dad.  Despite the fact my kids are only 8 and 7, I found myself feeling rather wistful at the thought of them leaving home - although they have both informed me they aren't going anywhere until they're at least 30.

As always, secrets and lies are revealed with consequences that catch the reader unawares and shatter the whole 'happy family' illusion completely.

It's cleverly done and I really enjoyed "The Goodbye Year".  Highly recommended.

About the Author

Kaira Rouda is a USA Today bestselling, multiple award-winning author of contemporary women's fiction and sexy modern romance novels that sparkle with humor and heart.

Her women's fiction titles include THE GOODBYE YEAR, HERE, HOME, HOPE, ALL THE DIFFERENCE and IN THE MIRROR. Her bestselling short story is titled, A MOTHER'S DAY. Her sexy contemporary romance series include the LAGUNA BEACH Series, the INDIGO ISLAND Series with a new MALIBU Series launching in 2016.

Her nonfiction titles, REAL YOU INCORPORATED: 8 Essentials for Women Entrepreneurs, and REAL YOU FOR AUTHORS: 8 Essentials for Women Writers (available for free download on her website) continue to inspire.

Kaira's work has won numerous awards including the Indie Excellence Award, USA Book Awards, the Reader's Choice Awards and honorable mention in the Writer's Digest International Book Awards. She lives in Southern California with her husband and four almost-grown kids, and is at work on her next novel.

Find the author on the following sites...

Website   Facebook   Twitter   Pinterest   Google+   Goodreads   Amazon Author Page

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I received this book to review through Beck Valley Books Book Tours, all the opinions above are 100% my own.

NOW FOR THE AUTHOR'S GIVEAWAY

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Open Worldwide

Ending on Friday 2nd September at 11.59pm EST

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A New Lower Cost Fertility Technique To Rival IVF?

A new fertility technique has been proven to improve pregnancy rates at a much lower cost than IVF and with fewer hormone drugs.

Researchers from the University of Adelaide in South Australia in collaboration with the University of New South Wales in Sydney and UZ Brussel at Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium (UVB) have developed a new method of in-vitro maturation (IVM) that uses growth factors to increase success rates.

Co-developer Jeremy Thompson said the new IVM cycle would be cheaper and safer than other popular methods such as in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) with a stronger success rate than current IVM models.

He said the improved method posed fewer side effects and would reduce treatment timelines.

Professor Thompson said.“In a normal IVF cycle it is necessary to enable a number of mature eggs that are collected at one surgical operation. IVM is a technique where we still have to recover the eggs but we can do it faster and with a lot less hormones - only about 10 per cent of the hormones that are used in a normal IVF cycle.

“In a normal IVF cycle, dependent on where you are in the world, the drugs cost about a third to half of the cost of the IVF cycle.”

Follicle stimulating hormones used in standard IVF cycles have been known to cause significant discomfort and can be harmful to women with a high sensitivity to them. This is often the case for women with polycystic ovarian syndrome.

Professor Thompson said the ability to harvest the eggs at an earlier stage allowed for a shorter time period before a patient was involved.

“This (new technique) results in a 50 per cent improvement in embryo yield compared to the standard IVM,” Prof Thompson said.

“It’s a significant improvement and it is very hard to make more and better quality embryo’s under any scenario.”

Professor Thompson said the method would also be highly beneficial for fertility preservation in cancer patients.

“Because IVM treatment requires virtually no hormones and is a far less truncated treatment, it is ideal to use with young women and girls that require their eggs to be harvested prior to chemotherapy or radiation treatment,” he said.

Professor Thompson said clinical trials for the enhanced IVM treatment were still being planned and would begin within the next few years.

Source: The Lead, South Australia

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How to save costs while running your business

Sometimes all businesses need to review their working practices with an accent on cutting expenditure. All companies are given to doing things the same way as they have been done before and this means that bad habits can be fallen into too easily.

When looking to increase your competitiveness and profitability, it is always advisable to look at your cost base before considering sales price rises.

The following useful tips are great for any SME owner, but are equally suited to larger organisations.

Don't Cut Budgets Equally

When you need to save a nominal figure from your outgoings, it can be tempting to make a corresponding cut from every budget you have in the business.

Let's say you identify the need to cut 10 per cent from all company expenditure. You may therefore lower your marketing budget by a tenth, your component expenditure by the same amount, your staffing costs by a further 10 per cent and so on.

This is not strategic cutting and can lead to problems with supplying customers down the line. Instead, look at the overall expenditure of each department under their nominal coding and work out where you can afford to make the cuts and where you cannot.

For example if your business has over 100 employees, Advance Systems Inc would advise looking at ways to maximise your workforce management using software.  Before you decide on your budget look to see if there are any other cost-effective solutions you could try, rather than making wholesale cuts.

Increase Your Warehouse Space Without Extra Overheads

When a company is expanding there seems to be a never ending demand on your cheque book. If you need to expand to meet demand, one of the most costly decisions you can make is to acquire – or rent – additional space.

Whether it is for storage, production lines or for additional administrative space, the additions of a mezzanine floor into a business unit can all but double the available space.

Different companies offer this service, you can find mezzanine floors in Leeds by WSSL. With little initial outlay they provide room for expansion, but do so without extra heating, lighting and rental costs.

Do Deals With Neighbours

In your business' vicinity there will be like-minded entrepreneurs who are also looking to cut costs.

Even if they operate in a completely different sector to you, such business may have outlay on things like marketing that can be shared.

For example, if you advertise in the local press or do the occasional leaflet distribution, why not produce adverts and flyers together so that the costs of them can be shared?

If you have a neighbour working in a similar way to you, then look into sharing equipment costs as a way of lowering expenditure.

Reduce License Costs

Software is essential for most businesses these days. However, the costs of buying it and having sufficient licenses for all of your team can be prohibitive, especially when you need to keep renewing it.

Many software suites have freeware that is just as good, so keep an eye out for versions of what you currently use that is free to download.

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