The Popup Hotel: Luxury Inside A Small Package

Posted on August 13, 2014November 4, 2015 by josh andrews

One of the most popular trends across the UK today is the popup hotel. This isn’t your grandpa’s camping experience, to paraphrase a popular auto advertisement. This type of camping is a comfortable as a bed and breakfast, and as luxurious as a 5 star hotel. You receive the same services when you stay in your spacious tent, from room service to mints on your pillow every evening.

Glamping

The popularity of The popup hotel has coined a new phrase in travelers’ lexicons: “glamping”. That’s because there is nothing muddy, hot, and bug-ridden with this type of camping. It is glamorous camping, or “glamping”.

With the popup hotel, not only do you sleep in a real bed every night, you have a private bathroom, climate control, and catering! The company provides all linens and pillows, as well as toiletries just as you would find in a fine hotel.

Climate control alone is enough to make the popup hotel popular with people who would normally eschew camping because of extremes in temperature. This way, you can hike until it gets hot, and retire to your tent to relax in moderate temperatures.

Gorgeous Locations for Popup Hotels

The popup hotel follows some of the most popular festivals, so you can easily find lodging in these great facilities. But not only can you have luxury accommodations on the grounds of the festival, you can also enjoy a solitary stay on some of the most gorgeous locations in the UK. Your own, unique campsite will be set up for your arrival, waiting for you to begin your holiday. This has become a popular way for newlyweds to celebrate their wedding trip, and for veteran spouses to celebrate landmark anniversaries.

Popup Hotel Amenities

These romantic settings are reminiscent of centuries old Yurts, but provide the spaciousness of safari tents. Complete with throw rugs and electricity, a make-up parlour and, in some cases, a restaurant and bar, the popup adventure proves to be private as well as luxurious.

Besides comfortable beds, you also have a living area in your popup hotel, with comfortable chairs and TV, if you want! It’s just like a hotel, but more glamorous.

Plenty of Space in Popup Hotels

You can even get suite accommodations with your popup hotel. Do you want to bring your kids with you on your holiday? That is no problem – they can enjoy the glamping experience, too, and still give you and your spouse the privacy you desire.

Since there is electricity and gas available for the tent, you can cook for yourself, or take advantage of the catering provided. Or, if you wish, you can cook outside and enjoy being part of the outdoors, just as you would if you were camping out.

One With Nature

With the popup hotel, you are one with nature. These zip-up tents even have a front porch, or stoop, complete with lounging chairs so that you can enjoy the world around you.

Exercise At Home Using Your Furniture

Posted on August 12, 2014February 29, 2016 by josh andrews

Who says you need expensive workout equipment to exercise? You can workout at home using your furniture as equipment, and get in great shape without costing a dime!

Furniture Sliders

You don’t have to go to a weight loss boot camp to get fit, those discs you buy to move heavy furniture around are actually excellent workout equipment. Available at most drug stores and furniture stores, these discs range from 2” to 5” in diameter, and make it extremely easy to move heavy furniture in your home. Your TV, sofa, and refrigerator can glide easily over carpet or solid floors without straining your back.

These furniture sliders also help you move your body over the same surfaces. Place each foot a slider, preferably on carpet. Then, do jumping jacks, except you slide. Slide your legs out until you are in the jumping jack position, then slide them back together. Talk about a workout!

Next, place your hands on the sliders, and get into a pushup position. Push your hands out in front of you, supporting your weight, and stretch out as far as you can, balancing on only your toes and hands. Then, slide back. The further out and back you can slide, the better your workout will be.

Stairs

You know that stair-stepper at the gym? Yeah, you have one at home. It’s called stairs. Sure, the stair-stepper can be adjusted for tension, simulating higher steps. To do this at home, climb up the steps 2 at a time. Bend the knee of the upper leg deeply, as if you were doing a runner’s stretch, then ease back into a standing position and climb up the step.

Another good use of stairs is to climb and descend them backwards. This tightens up your glutes. Just be careful to hold onto something so that you don’t fall.

Step Aerobics

You can use thick phonebooks to make your own step for step aerobics. Wrap the books up snugly with duct tape so that the pages don’t slide around.

Soup Cans

Many people have found that soup cans make excellent weights. Most cans weigh about a pound apiece, and are great for beginners. As you advance, you can add cans to a tote and do your weight lifting that way. Plus, you have a snack handy afterward!

Use the cans when you do bicep curls. Believe it or not, you’ll feel it the next day, if you are not in very good shape right now. Then, hold the can in your hand, and point your elbow to the ceiling with your hand down behind your shoulder. Keeping your elbow pointing up, slowly straighten your arm until your hand is pointing up. Then slowly lower it to the starting point. As you advance, switch to a tote with several cans for this exercise. It helps to eliminate that flabby arm problem that plagues so many women.

There are many more exercises you can do using furniture and household items. Basically, if you can work out in a gym, you can work out at home, too.

Custom Fabric For Your Home

Posted on April 23, 2014February 29, 2016 by josh andrews

Furnishing your home is an important job, nobody likes to have unfinished rooms and areas still in the style of the previous owners. That’s why it’s important to make sure you make your house your own. There’s noting quite like having everything finished and looking just how you like it, even down to the coasters on your table.

You may find though that when your home starts to get decorated, things never finish, ongoing decoration is something that I think happens to everyone. You’ll be walking through a shop and then you find something that you like and decide that an addition to the room is appropriate. There are some special touches to your room though that you may not have thought about. One thing I find when decorating, is that my local shops just don’t have enough choice. I like being able to look at a wide selection of the same item, I find with places like The Range and Dunelm Mill that they have a lot of different items but not enough actual selection between products like colour scheme. But there are places out there that do have a wide selection, the internet is where it’s all at!

There are all kinds of places to buy customised items online, here is a look at a few of them.

Ebay

Of course, ebay is a great place to purchase original and also out of production furniture. It’s not all second hand things on ebay either, there are a lot of new products on there. Once thing you have to be cautious of though is falling for fake merchandise. There are so many items available for purchase that you might just get yourself something that isn’t quite authentic. If this does happen I believe there are channels you can go down for a refund back from paypal / ebay.

Ebay has such a vast array of items that you should be able to find whatever you are looking for. There aren’t many times I’ve gone on there looking for something and not come away with what I wanted (or something else) So I highly suggest using this for your purchases.

Inchyra

You only have to visit Inchyra to know that your going to be in for high quality items. They originally started as a linen company, producing some great linens with some fantastic designs. they then took that idea, and started combining their linens with household items such as cushions, towels and aprons. Inchyra now sell a whole range of home items, from kitchen to Bathroom, but not just fabric items. Inchyra’s products have a particular style that I believe would fit with any home theme.

Mollie and Fred

Mollie and Fred is another rather unknown website, but they manage to sell some great items on their website. I think they are less producers, but just enjoy buying and selling great items. They have a wide selection of homeware and some great gift ideas, but I would say that this site is definitely dedicated to a younger crowd. They have some interesting product lines that I think are definitely worth a look, so check it out.

Creating Your Own Luxury Furniture

Posted on March 11, 2014November 4, 2015 by josh andrews

Luxury furniture isn’t out of everyone’s reach, you can easily take something that is uncomfortable and improve it to a stage that is unnecessarily luxurious, all you need is a bit of sewing knowledge. Well, that isn’t strictly true. Sewing knowledge might be helpful but I think in the end you need a knowledge of quality filling, linens and fabrics as well.

worn sofa cusions If you don’t have the right skills you may end up with something worse than the worn product you had to begin with, but if you make sure you read up and have a look online, you shouldn’t have any problems creating something worthwhile.

Fabrics

Choosing the right fabric for you upholstery is important, you want to get something that is soft, is not coarse and is strong enough to withstand years of sitting and pressure. If you can find something along these lines then you are on the right track. There are many fabric and linen shops online that you should be able to check, a place I usually go to online has a wide selection of quality British linen. It’s great being able to choose what pattern/colour/texture your furniture is going to be.

Stuffing

If you’re going to be upholsering sofa cushions, then something you need to look at is replacing the stuffing. There are a wide variety of stuffing and filling options available, whether you’re looking for a natural animal filling such as wool or cotton, or whether you are happy with synthetic filling such as polyester or coir fibre. Each have different properties, Synthetic fibre tends to be stronger and more resilient whereas wool and cotton are softer but weaker. As mentioned before, you need to really know what is going to do the right job, if you can work that out, then I say go for it.

Construction

The next stage is obviously construction. I won’t detail a guide in this article, but make sure to keep your eyes peeled in the future. Good luck with your upholstery, I hope you end up with the furniture that you want!

Defining Luxury Furniture

Posted on December 11, 2013November 4, 2015 by josh andrews

So everyone will have encountered some luxury furniture sometimes in their lives, and if they haven’t, they need to LIVE A LITTLE! But how do you know that the item you came across is true luxury furniture? I mean, what constitutes luxury furniture?

Well, first you have to narrow it down a little, what is the definition of luxury? Well, a luxury good is a good that is optional and not a necessity, but how would one apply that to furniture? Well, it’s not just optional goods, its items that are also above the standard of necessity. Now, people may try and judge necessity differently, some people have higher standards then others after all. But in this instance luxury furniture is furniture that goes beyond what your used to.

I encountered some luxury furniture recently actually, in a little B&B in Somerset. They had this luxurious sofa that vibrated and even had storage units that kept drinks cold. Now if that isn’t luxury furniture, I don’t know what is.

Buying Furniture, What You Need To Know

Posted on November 26, 2013November 4, 2015 by josh andrews

Everyone has bought furniture once in their lifetime, unless your quite young of course, but you’ll of had furniture in your bedroom when you were younger and you should know what to expect when it comes to quality. We’re living in a time now when mass production is a big thing (no pun intended). You can go to a shop like Dunelm Mill and pick up all kinds of different furniture items and decorations, if you like that kind of thing that is. This type of furniture seems very popular, almost too popular, it’s the kind of thing where you’ll go round somebodies house and you’ll spot something you have or someone you know owns all because its the same.

Now when it comes to complete wooden furniture, its also very similar in that department. Furniture can be mass produced just the same, the wooden stuff, and all the other stuff too. Just make sure when you look into buying your furniture, that you get it from a high quality furniture shop.

You really don’t want to get caught out, especially when you spend a lot more money on furniture than one should. When your spending hundreds of pounds, don’t let your money go to waste.

Attic Conversion, What Furniture Should You Get?

Posted on November 20, 2013February 29, 2016 by josh andrews

Attic conversions can be quite a big deal, especially if you’ve already had a free loft insulation grant. there’s no doubt about that. But if you’re interested in knowing what furniture you should get for an attic conversion, you should really look into what the new purpose of the room will be for.

Purpose

The purpose of an attic conversion can be for anything, alot of people feel that they would like to make use of extra space, maybe have a nice quiet place to read or relax. Others will make their attic an extra bedroom, and if you have the space, why not? There are lots of other ideas too, such as a home office or a luxurious bathroom with a large bath or shower. But as you can see, with all these possibilities it’s going to be difficult discussing what furniture might be needed.

Fit For All

If you have a set style in mind then you may be able to work out what furniture you require beforehand. I’ve been looking into several different types of furniture for my own attic conversion. I got the talented team at Attic Designs to take a look at my loft to see if there was anything they could do and it seemed like they had some brilliant ideas including creating the perfect entrance to the room.

Furniture

As for furniture, they gave me some good ideas, but also gave me a lot of things to look through, they helped me decide on what I was going to do which was great. I ended up knowing exactly what I wanted. So I guess the moral of the story is to talk to the people doing the conversion. Hopefully from that you can grasp exactly what you want for the finished job.

Protecting Your Lawn From The First Freeze

Posted on October 20, 2013October 22, 2013 by Guest Author

Dormancy

In the winter, warm-season grass goes into dormancy to protect itself from the harsh cold, kind of like hibernation. In order to protect themselves, the grass shoots will turn brown and die in response to short days and longer, colder nights. Keep in mind that the nature of dormancy allows the grass to make a full recovery once the weather warms up. However, please note that if the temperature falls below 20°F for several hours, there could be damage to warm-season turfgrass. Be sure to keep in mind that your lawn is capable of building up a tolerance after a few frosts and will respond by increasing the amount of carbohydrates and proteins inside. Once the temperature outside starts to warm up, you’ll want to wait at least a few weeks to give your lawn time to recover and start growing again. Be careful not to mow too closely at first, or you’ll risk scalping your lawn.

Water

It’s one of the most well-known ways to protect your lawn from frost: water it. Watering your lawn during the weeks before the first cold front will help the soil stay warm and stimulate root growth. Watering less frequently, but more thoroughly will train the roots to grow deep. Don’t water too late in the day, though. You want to water early so your grass has had enough time to absorb the water. Remember, you never want to send your grass to bed with wet feet. Please note that you should not water plants that have cold damage. This will contribute to root rot and ruin them. You can tell if your lawn has cold damage by checking for a wilted, water-soaked appearance, a foul odor, or if the grass is matted over the soil.

Cover Up

You’ll want to tent fragile plants that are stuck in the ground with an old sheet. This will keep frost from forming on them and damaging them. If possible, try to keep the fabric from coming in direct contact with the plant itself, because the cold can transfer onto the plant that way. The cover should be touching the ground as to keep the heat from the soil inside the structure. Also, be sure to remove the coverings before it warms back up too much, especially if they are in the sun. If the temperature rises to 38°F or above, you run the risk of damaging your plants from trapped heat. Also, move your containerized plants into a covered area like the garage for the night.

Prune & Rake

Prior to the first frost, prune back your trees. This is because shady areas of your lawn won’t be able to thaw as quickly from the limited amount of sunshine. When the soil can’t warm up well, it is at a higher risk for cold weather damage. Also, you should be doing this anyway, but rake up all the fallen leaves on your lawn. A layer of dead leaves will cover your grass and keep it from properly photosynthesizing.

Emily Kaltman writes for The Grass Outlet in Austin, Texas. She enjoys keeping a healthy lawn and writing about nature.

Installing Gates Onto Your Property

Posted on October 6, 2013February 29, 2016 by josh andrews

Having gates installed onto your property can give your property a whole new look, I know it seems like a small addition but gates really do make all the difference. It’s not just about asthetics either, gates add an extra level of security to your surrounding land, if your property is encapsulated by walls and the only entrance point is your drive, using gates is a great way to keep unwanted people out!

The style of gate and functionality can add to how well they appear from the outside. For instance, you can have double gates that open in the centre, you could also have a singular gate that swings out or inwards, or the least popular is a rising gate, that could lift up to allow your car onto your property. Now choosing a gate is entirely down to you, but you have to decide on a few key factors. A singular gate will take up alot of space when it opens, you’ll decide wether you want it to open inwards or outwards and if you have enough space to allow it to do so. Imagine you have 3 cars on the drive, is there enough space to allow the gate to open? Or if it swings outwards, will it be taking up space on the road? These are the deciding factors for this type of gate.

The next thing is the size of the gate, if you have a large gate will it be hard to move it? Perhaps you could have an electronic system to automatically open the gate. The next thing would be the material, I personally am a big fan of wooden entrance gates as opposed to metal, I find that the thicker wooden beams make for a much more aesthetically pleasing gate, but that’s just my personal preference.

The decision is really yours, what suits your property is up to you, have fun out there.

Moving To Modesto? What Should You Know

Posted on July 10, 2013July 16, 2013 by Guest Author

Although many people would say that A New Hope is George Lucas’s best movie, that’s probably just because they never saw American Graffiti. American Graffiti was made several years before Lucas began work on the Star Wars franchise and helped to launch the careers of Richard Dreyfuss and Ron Howard. You even get to see a small cameo from Harrison Ford before he was Han Solo. He plays a drag racer with a taste for danger and cowboy hats. While the movie was great for Lucas because it gave him notoriety and the clout to do Star Wars, it might have been even been better for Modesto, California. The movie was set here as Lucas grew up in Modesto, and viewers from all over the country had the chance to see some of Modesto up close for the very first time.

The beauty of Modesto is no longer a secret and many people come here from all over the country to visit, and some even choose to call it home because of the warm weather and the proximity to other major cities. Modesto currently has a population of well over 200,000 people, with many working in the agriculture industry. However, Modesto is much more than an agriculture town. Thousands work at E.&J. Gallo, the largest winery in the country, Memorial Medical Center, the Modesto Public School System, Seneca foods and more. Others commute outside the city everyday using the Amtrak San Joaquins. Whatever your reason for choosing to live in in Modesto, California, here are some things to keep in mind:

Do you need movers? Once you find a place to live, you’ll need to consider whether or not you need movers to help you with your big move. This might depend on how far you’re moving. If you’re moving across the country, long-distance movers may serve better than a few buddies who come for the free pizza and beer. Moving is one of the biggest stress-inducing events in one’s lifetime. Professional movers can help to alleviate some of that stress, so you can concentrate on other things.

Do you need furniture? If you’re not attached to your furniture or you’re currently still living with your parents or other family or friends, you might just want to consider getting furniture once you get there. There are many furniture stores in Modesto CA, so you’re sure to find some interesting and affordable items that will fit the style of your new home.

Do you need things to do? When you do move, if you find yourself sitting around and staring at your thumbs, you’re not looking hard enough for things to do. There are so many things to do in Modesto, California. From strolling along the tree-lined streets of Graceada Park or having a meal at the newly revitalized downtown section of the town, to checking out some minor league ball or Modesto’s many historical attractions, you will find no shortage of things to do.

Modesto is a fun and welcoming community that will surely be a great place to call home. George Lucas loved it so much; he made the town a star. You’ll love it too.

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License: Creative Commons image source

David Bloomer has spent most of his writing career moving around the states. He likes to share his advice to make moving as easy as possible.